Key roads suppliers in Northern Ireland have slammed the paucity of funding for network maintenance in the devolved nation, following a painful in-year uplift last month.
One senior figure said planned maintenance work on Northern Ireland roads could slow to a halt 'at the end of August', while a Highways source said the lack of funding was putting key jobs at risk.
The June monitoring round allocations saw around £118m additional cash provided by the executive; however, the Department for Infrastructure only received £6.1m in resource funding and £15.7m in capital, with roads losing out on key funding bids.
The £6.1m resource spending is set to see £3m swallowed up meeting 'a range of pressures, including Translink and NI Water'. A further £1.8m will be spent on 'increases in the road drainage charge', which the Department has a statutory obligation to pay, as well as £1.3m towards pressures facing the Driver & Vehicle Agency.
As for £15.7m capital allocations, the DfI will get £3.4m for the A1 Junctions Phase 2 scheme and £1m for Local Transport Safety Measures, 'aimed at raising road standards and enhancing safety for road users'.
However, the lion's share of the capital cash for the DfI will go towards 'pressures relating to water', which received an £11.3m allocation.
Finance Minister John O’Dowd said: 'Looking forward, my Department’s focus will now turn to the multi-year budget. With public expenditure likely to be constrained for some time, transformation must be an essential part of this Budget if the Executive is to deliver its ambitions within the funding available.
'This will be the first multi-year budget in over 10 years. This will provide an important opportunity to put our finances on a more sustainable footing and, along with the Programme for Government, will set the longer-term strategic direction.'
However, focusing on the hear and now, the Mineral Products Association Northern Ireland (MPANI) said the results were 'shocking' and 'will have a significant impact on safety, increased public liability claims and a wider economic impact'.
Gordon Best, regional director for MPANI, said: 'The levels of road structural maintenance funding of £68m being proposed for this coming year are truly shocking. In real terms, allowing for inflation, it takes us back to levels of spend last seen in the late 90s.
'Now the failure of the Department to get additional in year boost to this unsustainable allocation of £68m means that maintenance work on our roads will stop at the end of August. Our members cannot understand this, given the Department’s 2025-26 budget outcome, for both resource and capital, is showing a 14% improved position in comparison to previous years.
Mr Best added: 'We believe the Department have got the balance of spend all wrong. We have to be brutally honest, the impact of these decisions will be a continued acceleration in the deterioration of the road network condition, an increase to the risks to all road users, whether in vehicles, or on cycles or other active travel, or on foot. The economic and social impact on businesses in the contracting sector and working people who rely on this sector for sustained employment is enormous.'
The DfI 2025-26 capital budget allocation is £932.7m, an increase of £112.6m (14%) from the prior year’s opening budget. This constitutes the largest capital budget ever proposed for any NICS Department. However, it seems roads have missed out in the prioritisation of spending.
In the 2019 Barton report, the level of backlog maintenance was estimated at £1.2bn.
'Since then,' MPANI officials said, 'we have only been maintaining the roads network to keep it as it is'.
'Continued lack of funding for proper roads maintenance will only make this terrible situation worse, and if proper funding is not made available now this will indeed lead to an even worsening vicious downwards spiral of even more money in the medium to long term being spent on poor value reactive maintenance and increasing public liability claims.'
MPANI represents approximately 95% of companies involved in the supply of quarry products to the Construction Industry in Northern Ireland.
