Northern Ireland's Infrastructure Minister Chris Hazzard has announced a £10million investment to improve the condition of rural roads.
The Minister has earmarked additional funding announced by the Finance Minister earlier this month for resurfacing work on 1000 rural roads across the north.
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 1000 rural roads, repairing many short lengths of road (20-50m) in particularly poor condition, together with a number of longer resurfacing schemes of around 1 km.
"In this difficult financial period, it is of course necessary to prioritise resources, but for too long rural communities have dropped down the priority list.
"Today will go some way to addressing that imbalance and giving rural communities across the region roads that are fit for purpose and that will stand the test of time and weather."
The Department is currently considering areas in greatest need and will draw up programmes to enable work to start as soon as possible.
Rural roads 'severely underfunded' for many years
UFU deputy president Ivor Ferguson has described the decision as ‘positive and encouraging’.
Mr Ferguson said: "While considerably short of the total that would be necessary to improve all 18,000 km of roads in rural areas, it is encouraging rural communities have risen up the priority list as they are so reliant on a good road infrastructure."
The UFU says that until this announcement rural roads had been severely underfunded for many years and as a result have fallen into a state of disrepair.
"We would like to see some money going towards improving visibility on rural roads. Many junctions and verges are dangerously overgrown.
"Hedge and grass cutting is needed and we would like to see some of this money going towards the control of noxious weeds on road verges.
"Farmers invest a lot of money in preventing these on farmland, but they are fighting a losing battle without prevention on public road verges," said Mr Ferguson.
