A €618 million spending programme to improve regional and local roads this year was presented by Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey in Athlone, Co Westmeath, this afternoon.
The announcement of what is the largest ever single grant by Government for regional and local roads, was made by Minister Dempsey after the Department of Transport assumed responsibility for the administration of the budget from the Department of the Environment for the first time.
The programme will be fully funded under the National Development Plan 2007-2013 which provides for investment of a total of €4.3 billion in regional and local roads.
Ninety-four per cent of the country's roads are regional or local and carry about 60 per cent of all road traffic and 40 per cent of all goods traffic.
Over 50 per cent of the allocation announced today (€310m) will be spent largely on pavement restoration and will see improvements to 2,500 kilometres of road this year and will see maintenance of a further 4,200 kilometres.
Mr Dempsey said safety was a key plank of the non-national road allocations which will see some €188m spent on over 300 specific road improvements schemes with a further €8.5m to be spent on accident blackspots.
Another €7.5m is allocated for regional road signposting.
However, stressing the importance of the role of local authorities in the improvement and maintenance of the regional and local roads network, Minister Dempsey called for greater attention by local authorities on the road network.
He said "State grants are a supplement to expenditure by the local authorities. All authorities need to maintain and even increase their own expenditure on their road networks."