Debate contribution: Road Maintenance

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 16 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

16 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Road Maintenance

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5391909

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Member illustrates something in Mid Ulster, and I am sure that he could go to every constituency in Northern Ireland and illustrate something similar. That is the problem with the policies and shows their absurdity. Active travel has been prioritised over basic maintenance: ridiculous. Leaving maintenance to the end of the allocation-making in the Department shows me a Department with the wrong priorities. Years of operating with a limited maintenance service has meant that, unless a defect meets a ridiculous threshold, it cannot be fixed. Sporadically throwing pots of money here and there will improve the situation in the short term, but, unless a change in policy direction is enacted, we will continue to have a piecemeal approach that delivers crumbling patchwork quilts rather than the large overlays that many of our roads require. I often wonder why a bloated and, indeed, top-heavy Civil Service continues down the road of outsourcing patching work to subcontractors, when, surely, it would achieve better value for money and higher quality by employing staff directly instead of continuing to be at the mercy of others. If the Department continues along the route of outsourcing, it must move to a position where, when a road is being patched, all defects must be repaired, rather than wasting money by revisiting roads multiple times when another report is logged on the portal. Time and again, contractors go back to do a patch here and a patch there: how does that pay? That policy, coupled with paying contractors to temporarily repair potholes and return at a later date to carry out a permanent repair, is bad financial management. Excessive red tape and secrecy when people claim for damage caused by potholes due to our crumbling roads is another issue. I will mention two real-life cases. Number one relates to a North Antrim constituent who hit a pothole on 3 February 2024 on the Holywood Road in Newtownards. Due to the severity of the damage to multiple vehicles, the police were called and had to maintain a presence until the appropriate signage was put in place to warn other drivers. DFI turned down that constituent's claim and to this day hides behind an exemption clause in the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 as to why that claim was refused. I urge the Minister, who is in the Chamber, to direct that, when MLAs and constituents request basic information on why a claim has been turned down or whether any other individual was successful in claiming compensation relating to the same pothole, such information should be released. Case number two concerns a constituent who came to see me last week. On 16 November 2025, they hit a crater that was submerged in water on the Old Frosses Road outside Cloughmills. Photos of the pothole and the serious damage to the vehicle were taken, yet their claim was also turned down. DFI outrageously claims that, because the road was inspected on 23 June 2025 and no actionable defects were recorded, it is not liable. Surely, the Department cannot be allowed to absolve itself of liability on the basis of a check that was carried out five months earlier.

Minister, it is simply not good enough. There is no policy in place for slumps in rural roads. There is a poor interactive portal. When somebody logs a call, they do not even receive an email to say that it has been accepted, that an engineer is en route or the outcome of it. The list goes on and on. It is time for the Minister to get to grips with her Department and stop blaming others, because there is much work to do in DFI.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:56 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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