1. Mr Dunne asked the Minister for Infrastructure whether he will restore the pothole intervention level depth from 50 mm to 20 mm. (AQO 570/22-27)

My Department has been operating in a difficult financial environment for a number of years due to underfunding and austerity by the British Government. In response, my Department has had to reduce its road maintenance activities to a limited service that prioritises delivery of essential services for maintaining public safety and protecting the transport network. Consequently, only the highest-priority defects across the network are currently being repaired. That means that defects greater than 50 mm in depth are being repaired across all roads. However, on high-traffic urban and rural roads, defects greater than 20 mm are also being repaired. The level of repairs that can be carried out in any financial year depends on the funding available to my Department. I continue to engage with my Executive colleagues to ensure that my Department is properly resourced and funded.

I thank the Minister for his answer. Over the past year, the sheer number and scale of potholes in the North Down constituency has been truly shocking and a cause of great concern for the community that I represent. One example is the busy Castle Park Road in Bangor, which has a surface more akin to the surface of the moon. It has, so far, not been resurfaced as the potholes are millimetres short of the 50 mm. When will the Minister take proper action to address our roads crisis and restore the depth to 50 mm, as it was in 2015-16?

I thank the Member for his question. We are taking all actions available to us. The Member will be acutely aware that Ministers from all Departments and parties are under significant financial pressure. Since going into the Department, I have engaged with my departmental colleagues on how we improve public services as best we can with the limited public resources available to us. We have set in place a plan for reacting to potholes. I accept that potholes are an issue on many roads, but that is not only the case in this jurisdiction: in the South, England, Scotland and Wales, there is also a potholes crisis. It all goes back to this one issue: 14 years of austerity leading to a deterioration in public services and public infrastructure. Our roads are a glaring example of that.

Minister, given the prevalence of potholes, what is your assessment of the use of concrete for road repairs?

Generally, concrete surfacing is used only on rigid pavement construction where all pavement layers are concrete. There are few roads here of that type, and, because of that, concrete is not considered a suitable option for maintenance resurfacing on the existing road network. The use of concrete road surfacing also raises environmental concerns, including noise and embodied carbon. It entails high initial costs, excessive maintenance costs and high replacement costs at the end of life.

I concur with my North Down colleague that Castle Park Road in Bangor is an absolute mess. It is not just the depth of the potholes that your Department will not resurface but the number of them. The number of potholes is dangerous for cyclists. They are also near a school, and it is a busy road. Please, Minister, will you listen to us and resurface it?

As the Member will be aware, when reports of potholes come in, they are logged in the local section office. Where there is a group of potholes, they are most likely to be inspected by the inspection and maintenance team. Where they meet the criteria, they will be repaired. Where there are significant numbers of potholes in the one area and the resources are available, we will resurface significant stretches of road, as Members have seen in recent months in different areas. I am minded that the June monitoring round is coming up, and I will make a bid in relation to road maintenance to ensure that our network is maintained as well as it can be in the current scenario.

As I said to the Members who asked the previous questions, many of our public services are crumbling. The thing about roads is that you see that happening physically in front of you. That is what happens when you have had an austerity agenda at the heart of the British Government for the past decade.