Member's statement: Potholes

Member's statement by Mr David Brooks on 2 February 2026.

MLA

Mr David Brooks

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

2 February 2026

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Potholes

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5356190

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I see that the Infrastructure Minister has now left the Chamber, I hope, to get a grip on the issue of potholes across Northern Ireland. On Saturday night, my phone lit up with constituents getting in touch with urgent reports that 12 cars with their hazard lights flashing were blocking the country-bound lane on the Ballygowan Road after a widening pothole had severely damaged or burst their tyres, one after the other. The damage was so severe that I had to contact the PSNI to ask them to attend the road, which had been brought to a standstill. That was not an isolated incident in that location. Just days earlier, the same pothole was headline news when a funeral cortege suffered two burst tyres, forcing a grieving family to walk the remaining distance to Roselawn cemetery. Despite that media attention and that warning, 12 road users found themselves stranded on the side of the road on Saturday night at the same location for the same reasons. Potholes are, unfortunately, a fact of life but, increasingly, they have become symptomatic of systemic failure, rather than isolated wear and tear. I cannot recall a situation in which so many vehicles were damaged in such a short time by the same defect. That does not happen by accident. That particular pothole was, reportedly, made safe. A direction was issued by the Department for Infrastructure to contractors that, typically, involves filling the defect with loose stones until a permanent repair can be carried out. I must simply ask this: how many times can a road defect be, allegedly, made safe before it is acknowledged that that approach no longer works? In recent years, road maintenance in Northern Ireland has shifted to what the Department for Infrastructure describes as a "safety-only approach". Defects are left untreated until they meet higher intervention thresholds. Even when those thresholds are met, repairs are much smaller, more limited and far more likely to fail, reopening in the same location and creating repeat hazards. When the Department changed that policy in 2021, it was presented as an emergency response to funding pressures. That emergency position has now become the default operating model, overseen by the Minister for Infrastructure. The consequences are now playing out on our roads: repeat failures, repeat damage and ordinary people left stranded, out of pocket and waiting for compensation from the Department that decided that the road was safe enough and met the intervention criteria. This is not about bad weather or bad luck; it is the predictable outcome of policy choice. When the cost of those choices is borne not by the Department but by hard-working road users, deferred maintenance simply converts maintenance costs into compensation payouts. Twelve road users are now bearing the cost of that failure from their own pockets. I dread to think what the consequences would have been had a motorcyclist encountered that situation. The Minister needs to come to the Assembly and give an honest account as to why defects are repeatedly made safe, allowed to fail —

— and acted on only after the damage has occurred.

518 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:18 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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