The Department for Infrastructure has spent more than £115 million repairing roads across Northern Ireland over the past 12 months.
This compares with £99.7 million in the previous year.
The Department for Infrastructure spent a total of £106.2 million in 2022/23.
The area with the highest spend on road maintenance since 2020 was the southern region of the north where £33.3 million was spent.
The next highest amount was in the west, with £29.7 million and then the north with £28.4 million
The roads with the least amount spent on them in recent years are in the east where £23.9 million.
These figures are on top of money paid to the department’s own in-house contractors.
The internal fees paid hovered between £16 million and £21 million each year.
The figures come as the result of an Assembly Question by SDLP Foyle MLA Mark H Durkan.
“I think it has been absolutely eye-watering,” he said.
“And that’s what’s been spent on it, and look at the state of the roads. So there’s a lot more to be done and a lot more needing to be spent, you would think, to get our roads up to the standard that they should be
“I think there’s a question about accountability. It is a huge amount of public money.
“It’s my intention to do further research in terms of costs of some of their works in other jurisdictions, you know—be it across the UK or in the South.
“For many years their roads would have been something of a laughing stock. But now if you look at it—and I just live a couple of miles from the border—the difference in quality is plain to see and plain to feel whenever you’re driving.
“It would be very hard to argue that it’s money well spent, given the state of the roads still currently. It seems that they don’t even repair the potholes, they just move them around.”
The Department for Infrastructure has been contacted.