West takes lion's share of £10m investment in rural roads

The news comes shortly after complaints from Mid Ulster councillors that roads in the area are the worst in the region.

With the new tranche of funding, roads in the south will have £5.5m spent on them, while the Eastern area will get just £500k for resurfacing work. Northern roads will see an additional £2m spent on them.

The Minister said: “I am delighted to announce today that rural communities across the region will benefit from a £10million road improvement package to stop deterioration and repair severe defects on their local road network.

“The improvements will target around 1,000 rural roads, repairing many short lengths of road (20-50m) in particularly poor condition, together with a number of longer resurfacing schemes of around one kilometre.

“For too long rural communities have dropped down the priority list. Today will go some way to addressing that imbalance.”