One quarter of Ireland’s regional roads have defects

Almost a quarter of the Republics regional roads have serious structural or surface defects, while many local roads are in even worse condition, according to a report from the National Oversight and Audit Commission.

The auditors’ report, which assessed non-national roads using data supplied by local authorities themselves, looked at regional roads which carry high volumes of traffic, as well as local roads divided into primary, secondary and tertiary.

In league tables drawn up by the auditors damage to local and regional roads is classed in order of severity as as “structural distress”, “pavement defects” or “surface defects”. Kildare had the highest level of structural defects on regional roads, Mayo had the highest levels of structural defects in local primary roads, and Sligo and Westmeath tied for the highest level of structural defects on local secondary roads . The county with the highest percentage of structurally deficient tertiary roads was Co Clare.

In a commentary the auditors said “some key messages emerge”. They found that, overall, 19 per cent of regional roads have moderate to significant pavement defects while a further five per cent of such roads “display structural distress”.

Structural distress

Local primary roads were marginally worse with 27 per cent having pavement defects and 8 per cent displaying structural distress. More than one third of local secondary roads showed moderate to significant pavement defects, while 15 per cent displayed structural distress. Local tertiary roads – commonly known as “boreens” – were in the worst condition with 28 per cent displaying structural distress, while 27 per cent displayed pavement defects.

However the auditors noted the absence of data from a small number of local authorities, including Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, Fingal, South Dublin, Cork City and Meath.

In what could be seen as a warning to these authorities the auditors said the data would in future be used for “the targeting of resources to areas most in need”. If that is the case, authorities which do not supply data on the condition of their roads may lose out on exchequer funding.

Damaged roads

The National Oversight and Audit commission also ranked the damaged roads as a pecentage of the amount of roads by county. Thus, it showed 2.26 per cent of roads in Co Kildare showed “severe structural distress” with extensive loss of pavement surface. A further 5.26 per cent of regional roads in Kildare showed there was “structural distress present”. This was followed by Donegal where 1.77 per cent of regional roads were classed as suffering “severe structural distress” and a further 8.48 per cent of the county’s roads were classed as having “structural distress present”.

In Mayo 2.6 per cent of the roads have defects classed as “severe”. A further 20.83 per cent of the local primary roads in Mayo were classed as having “significant” structural distress.

One per cent of primary roads in both Westmeath and Sligo were found to have severe structural defects, while 15 per cent of Sligo’s secondary local roads were classed as having structural distress present.

In Co Clare 22 per cent of its tertiary roads were classed as having “severe” structural defects and 15 per cent were regarded as having “structural defects present”.

In Mayo 16.3 per cent of tertiary roads were classed as severe, and 8.5 per cent had structural defects.