Over £7m to tackle potholes in spending boost - but will it be enough?
An extra £7.85m is to be spent tackling Northern Ireland’s crumbling roads, Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins announced today.
But a DUP MP has questioned whether it will be enough, with Carla Lockhart raising doubts about the minister’s wider priorities when it comes to spending.
The funding boost comes as unspent money from several Stormont departments was returned to central government to be reallocated.
The Department for Infrastructure is to get £16.8m of it, with £7.8m on to be spent road repairs while NI Water and Translink get £3.18m each.
Stating that wind, rain and snow that have battered Northern Ireland in recent weeks have also damaged the condition of roads, Ms Kimmins stated the cash boost would “allow for targeted road maintenance to be rolled out in the coming weeks”
She also repeated a regular statement she makes blaming “a legacy of underfunding from the British government”, which she’s been noted as frequently bringing up when answering questions about her department in Stormont.
But Upper Bann MP Mrs Lockhart questioned whether the minister makes the right choices when allocating her department’s £850m annual budget, pointing out that an eight-figure sum spent on ‘active travel’ schemes to facilitate cycling and walking is due to massively increase “while our roads are crumbling”.
Pointing out that the minister regularly points to a digital survey system that maps where potholes are, Ms Lockhart stated: “People aren’t concerned about finding them, it’s fixing them that is required.
“Upper Bann is plagued with potholes, but it is no different to every other part of Northern Ireland. I am dealing with dozens of constituents whose cars are damaged, and forced to lodge compensation claims with the department. Instead of paying to repair cars it makes far more sense to repair the roads instead.
“Even when a repair is carried out, it needs to be more than just a temporary patch that will see the same problem reoccur within a few weeks or months, and the same crew dispatched to repeat their work.”
In recent weeks the MP has repeatedly highlighted the poor state of roads in her constituency, at one point including a single pothole damaging 10 cars in the space of a few hours on Lurgan Road heading out of Banbridge.