Debate contribution: Potholes: Road Safety Fears

Debate contribution by Ms Liz Kimmins on 3 February 2026.

MLA

Ms Liz Kimmins

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

3 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Question for Urgent Oral Answer

Heading

Potholes: Road Safety Fears

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5362905

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I have mentioned today lots of things that we are working towards. My key message is that I am being proactive in getting additional investment from Executive colleagues. I will use that investment to deal with such issues in the immediate and short term. I am also working in my Department to find ways in which to maximise our capacity. On your question about the claims process, in order to investigate a claim thoroughly, officials have to check highway inspection records, repair records and other records that the Department already holds. They also need to confirm whether a contractor or any other third-party organisation is involved and check invoices and receipts for repairs. In some instances, they have to arrange site inspections. Loss assessors are also employed on occasion to provide expert advice on the extent and likely cost of the damage. Furthermore, in some cases, there are personal injury claims, so medical records from external bodies may have to be examined. We therefore have to ensure that the process is thorough. I presume that Members agree that, when we are dealing with public money, we have to go through such processes. I appreciate that four months is quite a lengthy period, but, as I said, increased numbers of claims are coming in. We are trying to deal with and respond to the issues in hand as well. The process takes time. Where we can speed it up and streamline it, we absolutely will. We do not want anybody to be waiting any longer than they should, but we also have to ensure that all the checks and balances are in place.

As I have said, maintenance of rural roads was a specific priority. Out of that monitoring round, I was able to allocate just over £4 million to patching for the remainder of the financial year. I also mentioned the 40 schemes that will be programmed in over the next three months, many of which are already on the ground and being delivered. It is important to note that, had we not been able to get that money through December monitoring and had I not prioritised roads maintenance, we would not have been able to deliver those 40 schemes in this financial year. The allocation ensures that my Department is able to maximise the contractor capacity that is available, in addition to my Department's capacity, to address the concerns that exist about road conditions following the exceptional weather that has been experienced in recent weeks.

It is important to say that I have asked officials to engage with contractors to see whether there is more that we can do, with the resources that they have, to enhance the response to what we are dealing with. As I have said, the best way to give confidence to the contractors and the public that we can invest more in capacity and deliver more adequately is to have a stable, long-term funding pipeline, which we would get from a multi-year Budget.

I do not know the criteria for a roads emergency. That has come up time and time again. I am focused on finding solutions to deal with the issues that we face in the short, medium and long term. That is the only way in which we will see real progress. We can all give examples of where work needs to be done; for me, it is about how we make sure that that work is done. I am working on that with officials, and I am committed to doing so in the long term.

As I said, there is a prioritisation process: we try to address the most safety-critical defects first, because we want to ensure that the roads are as safe as possible; resources are targeted to those potholes in the first instance. However, roads can continue to deteriorate, and, as I said when giving an example earlier, I appreciate that that can happen rapidly — within a day in some cases, given certain weather conditions and heavy traffic. I encourage elected representatives to continue to feed in as much as possible, particularly with images, because that allows us to make decisions even quicker. I am not putting the onus back on others, but, as I outlined, we cannot have staff on every road at every hour of the day. Therefore, we appreciate that information coming in, as it helps us to better prioritise.

We have been made aware of issues with the website, such as error messages coming up. We are working with IT to try to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. If constituents or elected representatives are unable to use the website properly, I encourage them to, where possible, contact their local section office directly for a response.

I am not too sure what the question was — I could not really hear it — but I assume that you are reporting potholes in that specific area. If those have not been reported already, we can certainly take that away and ask for them to be looked at.

The issue was raised with me today, and I have spoken to officials about it, because I recognise that, as I have said, things can deteriorate quickly and do not always happen during nine-to-five hours. It is important that elected reps, if they cannot get a response through the helpline, contact the local section office or one of the section engineers — we should all have contact details for them — who take such things very seriously and will respond. I know of an example, given to me this morning, of the PSNI having to be contacted. If a road needs to be closed, that may be the appropriate avenue. I say that not to put extra pressure on the PSNI but because it has the power to close a road, whereas we do not. The first port of call is to go through the emergency line or to contact your local section engineer, who can probably respond in a more efficient manner.

We could spend all day comparing the different schemes that there could be, and there are different viewpoints on that. The Minister and the Department have a responsibility to take in and look at the views of a wide range of people. A lot of the work that we do has to go through consultation. I recognise that consultants' fees can be high, but that applies to all areas of government and is not specific to my Department. We continually look at where we can make efficiencies and savings. It is incumbent on all Ministers to look within our Departments to see whether we can make further savings to live within our budgets, because that is what we are expected to do. Given the overall Executive Budget, it is particularly difficult, but we have to be prudent and ensure that we show due diligence. I continually look at the budget to see where else we could make savings that could ensure that I could invest more in our roads maintenance and in new schemes for resurfacing while delivering on all my other ministerial responsibilities, including active travel.

That issue has come up time and again. We are looking at different approaches to enhancing the resources needed to target pothole repairs and, as I have said in the draft roads maintenance strategy, bigger stretches of road so that we do not continually go back, because that is a waste of time for our staff. It is about how we can improve the resilience of the road network. We are also looking at how we can recruit more staff, as I have said, to enhance resource capacity, and looking at doing things ahead of winter periods so that we are prepared, through surface dressing etc, including in rural areas. We are doing a number of things. We are also looking at other approaches and at what is happening elsewhere. It is about making sure that we efficiently use the limited resource that we have so that people see better results on the ground.

I have not given any excuses. I have told you exactly what I am proactively trying to do. Support from Executive colleagues is required to get investment into my Department so that I can deal with the issues at hand. I will not be found wanting when it comes to the work that I am doing.

We are in a situation, but a lot of things have been out of our control, not least the weather. It is important to say that, even if we had got ahead of this two weeks ago, we would have seen a further deterioration of the same roads last week when we had very heavy rainfall. We have the same people out tackling lots of issues as a result of the storms. They are also out gritting. All of that has had an impact on the integrity of our roads. However, as I said, we have been working closely with officials to see what else we can do, how we can maximise the resources that we have in the Department and what additional investment we can get to tackle the issue in the here and now.

Thirty minutes is enough.

1,543 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:28 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification