It will take the next 15 years and up to €2 billion to repair rutted, cracked and pot-holed regional roads, it has emerged.
This follows an estimate conducted by the Department of the Environment of the cost of fixing problems with the road surfaces identified on the non-national network. The Department expects it will take between 10-15 years to remedy the problems.
Details of the funding requirements were released by the Minister for the Environment Dick Roche through a Dáil reply.
The Minister said that while the number of pot-holes and rate of road disintegration nationally has "effectively halved since 1996 as a result of the €1.5 billion investment . . . instances of other defects, such as rutting and edge cracking, has increased since 1996 as a result of growth in traffic on the network - particularly that of heavier and wider commercial vehicles."
Last year a Pavement Condition Study on non-national roads carried out by consultants was published which identified the needs of each local authority, based on problems with the road surfaces in their area. This report showed that the extent of traffic growth over the past 10 years, particularly the number of heavy goods vehicles, is leading to the deterioration of the road surface.
"The study concludes that the economic boom, since the first study was carried out in 1996, has fundamentally changed the loading regime on the non-national roads network, with much higher and more frequent loading by heavier vehicles now being the norm," the Minister said in his reply to Mayo Fine Gael deputy Michael Ring.
This year more than €205 million has been made available to deal with some of these defects, under the Restoration Improvement scheme. The Minister for the Environment added that grants of a further €75 million have been made available under the Restoration Maintenance works programme.
For this year the State will spend more than €558 million on non-national roads under a variety of different programmes.
The money for the pavement works is allocated to councils on the basis of priority based on the problems identified in the Pavement Condition Study. This is 13 per cent higher than the 2005 allocation.
A spokesman for the Department said last night that because resources were finite it was not possible to carry out the necessary works in a shorter timespan.
Mr Roche said the Department also provides grants to local authorities for works on non-national roads under a number of other grant categories.
However, the Minister said in his Dáil reply there was no "estimate of the total funding requirements for improvements to, and construction of new, non-national roads.
"Grants are allocated on an annual basis and in determining the annual non-national road grant allocations, the overall objective is to resource each local authority appropriately in relation to their ongoing and special needs.
"The process is guided by a range of criteria, including road pavement conditions, traffic volumes, length of road network, population and eligibility in relation to specific projects such as EU Co-Financed Specific Improvements Schemes," he told the deputy.
