Minister rejects ‘ludicrous’ claim she is neglecting pothole repairs

The Infrastructure Minister has rejected as “ludicrous” the claim that she is neglecting pothole repairs to “make a constitutional point”.

Sinn Fein’s Liz Kimmins appeared before the infrastructure committee as 49,000 defects have been reported on roads in the last three months.

On Tuesday, the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) allocated a further £2.5 million for roads maintenance, in addition to the £7 million Winter Recovery Road Fund.

DUP MLA Stephen Dunne said many of his constituents believed that Ms Kimmins “as a Sinn Fein minister may be deliberately running down the state of our roads to potentially make a constitutional point”.

Ms Kimmins said the claim is “absolutely untrue”.

“I think it’s actually quite a ludicrous claim to make, and I think that, as I said earlier, the issues that we are seeing with our roads at the minute are not something that have only just happened,” she said.

“These have been reported on year after year. I mean, I had a wee look back as I said over the previous years, January, February, same headlines, same issues being raised, and some of them are going back as far as 2016.

“So that’s not to take away from this issue, this is absolutely a really, really important issue, particularly for me.

“I’m a road user too, as are my family, my friends, our communities, I want to see that our road network is fit for purpose.

“That is why we’ve been working extremely hard to find how we can maximise the very limited resources that we have to deal with the issues that we’re seeing.”

She added: “But the reality is that years and years of under-investment have led us to this point. It’s very difficult to get ahead of that without having to react to it in the way that we have been, so it’s not ideal.”

Mr Dunne said there is a “pothole pandemic” and asked the minister if she “had a cure”.

“We do need solid action plans, people are fed up and frustrated with strategies and so on, we do need to see action,” he said.

The Infrastructure Minister again highlighted the funding her department has put towards roads adding that “there’s an important question to be asked here on the Executive budget”.

“As your colleagues in the Executive will be acutely aware of, we’re facing a significant overspend from some of the departments around the Executive table, who also recognise there’s been years and years of under-investment,” she said.

“I’m striving to live within my budget, but also to try and maximise the budget I have so that we can deal with these issues. They’re critically important to me.”

Earlier, Ms Kimmins said the number of potholes “can be traced back to the constant under-investment in our network over many, many years”.

She said recent storms, prolonged rainfall and snow “have all taken their toll on the roads, with 49,000 defects being recorded in the last three months alone”.

The DfI has also launched a digital roads survey that will use AI and HD imaging to manage the road network.

“Every road will be captured and used to identify and prioritise urgent maintenance to address defects, such as potholes,” she said.

“In practice this means, instead of filling one or two potholes and skipping over others, there will be more patch resurfacing and when this is done, repairs will last longer because they will be better quality.

“I’m committed to raising the standard of maintenance across the network, ensuring that interventions are timely, durable and delivered to consistently high specifications.

“This will reduce long-term costs, improve user experience and enhance safety.”