239. Deputy Donna McGettigan asked the Minister for Transport to instruct his Department to take account of recent weather conditions when issuing road repair budgets due to the negative impacts on roads; to increase the road repair budgets in Clare from 4% of overall budgets to 10%; and to allocate additional funding in areas where felling licences have been granted by the Dept of Agriculture, Food and the Marine so that roads damaged in felling and transportation operations can be promptly repaired. [64828/26]

In accordance with Section 13 of the Roads Act 1993, as amended, the improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads is the statutory responsibility of each local authority. Work on such roads is funded from Councils' own resources, supplemented by State road grants. The initial selection and prioritisation of work to be funded is a matter for local authorities.

Within the budget available for the protection and renewal of regional and local roads, my Department allocates funding under the Regional and Local Roads Grant Programme on the basis of the length of such roads within each eligible local authorities' areas of responsibility, which is considered to be the most equitable method.

I appreciate that, within the overall parameters set for the grant programmes, local authorities might wish to target funding at particular areas and there is sufficient flexibility in the structure of the grant programmes to allow for this. Apart from a requirement that 15% of Restoration Improvement Grants are spent on the more heavily trafficked regional roads, each local authority has the discretion to decide on its priorities for maintenance and renewal work programmes. Each local authority can also decide its own priorities for expenditure on regional and local roads when allocating its own resources.