Motion: Border Corridor Rural Roads Investment Programme

This Council notes the chronic and historical underfunding of rural roads infrastructure across the entire border corridor, stretching from Derry and Donegal through Tyrone, Fermanagh, Monaghan, Cavan and Armagh to Louth, and recognises the worsening condition of roads that are vital to rural communities, farming, school transport, emergency services, tourism and everyday economic life.

Council believes that this border corridor has suffered from decades of underinvestment in roads infrastructure and that repeated pothole patching is no longer an acceptable, adequate or sustainable response.  Accordingly, we will encourage all Councils and local authorities along the border corridor to work with Fermanagh and Omagh District Council in its call for the British Government, the Northern Executive, the Irish Government, the European Union to work together to establish a new Border Corridor Rural Roads Investment Programme.

This would be specifically designed to secure new funding over and above existing roads budgets to overcome peripherality, deliver regional economic connectivity, climate resilience and long-term rural network recovery across these historically underinvested border communities.  The programme should focus on permanent resurfacing, drainage renewal, flood mitigation and long-term road recovery right across the full border corridor area.

That this Council further agrees to write to the Minister for Infrastructure, the First Minister and deputy First Minister, the Irish Minister for Transport, the British Secretary of State, the North/South Ministerial Council, the British-Irish Council and neighbouring border councils seeking urgent collaboration on a jointly funded border roads initiative.  This Council also agrees to take the lead by hosting a Border Corridor Roads Summit in the Erne East area bringing together governments, border councils and other key stakeholders with the intention of the evidence from the summit being submitted to the Stormont Executive and the Irish Government for the responsible Departments to develop a Border Corridor Roads Evidence Paper with clear agreed outcomes and investment priorities.