THE Government is facing an unexpected multi-million-pound bill for county roads following a High Court judgment yesterday ordering Cavan County Council to repair a six-mile stretch of pot-holed road near Belturbet.
In her ruling in favour of local residents, Miss Justice Carroll said the Oireachtas had imposed a statutory duty on local authorities to maintain the roads and must therefore find the money to enable them to discharge this obligation.
The judge, who visited Co Cavan to see the state of some of the roads, said a plea of lack of funds was no defence. And since the council could no longer look to domestic and agricultural rates, the Exchequer would have to "make up the shortfall".
The council will appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing that it would cost £40 million to repair the estimated 600 county roads which it admits are in the same condition as the Ashgrove-Staghall road, the subject of a High Court action by 34 local residents.
If the Supreme Court upholds Miss Justice Carroll's judgment, the Department of the Environment would have to find several hundred million pounds to finance a programme of repairs to nearly 80,000 kilometres of minor roads throughout the State.
Under the county road restoration programme, the Government has allocated £73 million this year in grants to local authorities for repairs to non-national roads. More than 4,000 projects are expected to be completed by the end of the year.
So far, only 8 per cent of the total network of 87,800 kilometres of county roads has been repaired. The Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, said in September it would take "a good many years" to bring the rest up to an acceptable standard.
Delivering a progress report which was designed to "give heart to those who still live on potholed roads", he said "great strides" were being made to deal with the problem under the 10-year programme and local communities were beginning to see results.
