Debate contribution: Road Maintenance
Debate contribution by Mr Justin McNulty on .
- MLA
- Mr Justin McNulty
- Party at the time
- Social Democratic and Labour Party
- Date
- 16 February 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Road Maintenance
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5391238
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I welcome the motion and thank the Members who tabled it. Potholes are no mere inconvenience; they are a daily hazard for people in Newry and Armagh and in the North more generally. There are 6,281 reported potholes in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and the Newry, Mourne and Down District Council area. Across the North, there are 11,797 reported potholes in total. Minister, more than half the potholes in the North are in your constituency: what is going on? My office is inundated with calls from constituents who are fed up with and furious at the state of our roads. They speak of burst tyres, cracked alloys and broken suspensions, as well as of danger avoidance, with cars attempting to miss craters having to swerve into the pathway of oncoming traffic. That is extraordinarily dangerous. Constituents describe roads as resembling the crater surface of the far side of the moon. They talk about crater after crater, potholes within potholes and temporary fixes that break at the first sign of rain or frost. Last Wednesday, I posted on social media to ask people where the dangerous potholes are across my constituency of Newry and Armagh, which is also the Minister's constituency. By the next morning, there were 500 comments that identified more than 300 locations — 300 hazards; 300 daily risks — in Newry and Armagh. I thank everyone who took the time to engage with the post. That is not anecdotal frustration; it is overwhelming evidence of systematic and systemic failure.
Yes.
Talk about being political. On that point — thank you for bringing it up — the Member who tabled the amendment, Mr Boylan, who is also from Newry and Armagh, asked our Minister 228 questions about roads. In this mandate, when there is a Sinn Féin Minister, how many questions has he asked? You can count the number on the fingers of two hands. Who is being political? I have written to the Minister — I have lost my place. Forgive me. The depth of the potholes is surpassed only by the depth of the frustration felt by our constituents in Newry and Armagh and across the North. It is a public safety issue. It is about the mother driving her children to school, the shift worker commuting before dawn, the farmer transporting livestock and the cyclist navigating traffic. Every one of those people deserves roads that are safe and fit for purpose. Road maintenance is not a luxury; it is the core function of government. When potholes are left to multiply, when repairs are cosmetic rather than structural and when communities are told year after year to be patient, trust in public services erodes. People rightly ask, "Where are our taxes going?". I have written to the Minister to detail the location of each pothole that was identified in response my social media post, and I again thank everyone who responded. Minister, I hope that you will join me in thanking the hundreds of people who took the time to outline the location of those dangerous potholes and that you will attempt to get the potholes filled and make the roads in our constituency safer. I recognise the scale of the challenge faced by the Minister, but leadership means taking responsibility, and people need solutions. It is farcical for a so-called republican Infrastructure Minister to deflect blame indefinitely on the British Government and the bad Tories while our roads continue to crumble beneath us. The recently announced £7·85 million winter recovery road fund is welcome. It presents an opportunity, but it cannot become another headline without delivery. The Sinn Féin amendment ignores the severity of the issue and merely pats the Minister and her party on the back for the worst potholes we have seen in a generation. No, we cannot support that. The funding must translate into visible, durable resurfacing, not temporary patches that wash away by winter's end. Something must be done urgently to make our roads safer and easier to navigate. Motorists, cyclists and pedestrians do not want more excuses from the Minister or her party. They do not want the potholes photographed or new technology that maps out where they are. They want the Minister to send somebody out with a tin of yellow paint and fill the bloody potholes.
722 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.23 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.88).
- No identity-based framing was identified (0.77).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.09 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.06 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.21 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.14 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.88 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.23 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 0.77 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.01 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.22 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.64 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.14 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.10 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.09 |
| Religion and belief (including people of no religion), churches, faith communities and religious prejudice (including antisemitism and anti-Muslim prejudice) | 0.01 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:53 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
Disagree with this assessment?
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