Varadkar announces additional €50m for regional and local roads

An additional €50 million is being spent on rehabilitating some 600km of regional and local roads, Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar announced last night.

The money, which is part of the proceeds of the sale of the National Lottery, is being given to local authorities to repair damage caused by recent severe winters.

Preferential levels of “top-up” finance were being given to local authorities that have committed high proportions of their own finance to roads, Mr Varadkar said.

Mr Varadkar also revealed that €1 million saved from the budget of the Commissioners of Irish Lights is going towards providing a “toll-free month” for hauliers on some of the State’s most underutilised motorways.

Improvements in surfaces Commending the supplementary budget to the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Mr Varadkar said most of the works on regional and local roads were already under way, and improvements in surfaces could already be seen.

The toll-free month is also already under way, and roads affected include the M1, M3, M6 and the Limerick Tunnel.

Mr Varadkar told the committee that Dublin’s M50 toll was not among the beneficiaries as it was not under-utilised by lorries, and the cost of the month’s tolls would be excessive.

The subsidy is aimed at roads where heavy goods vehicles are known to divert to avoid tolls. Mr Varadkar said lorries diverting from main roads caused some of the worst wear and tear on regional and local roads.

He said he hoped that when the free month was over and the usage figures were finalised, hauliers would realise that, with time and fuel savings, it was worth their while to continue to use the toll roads.