Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to finish by thanking the Minister again for her response. Some local authorities are better at drawing down the money than others, and that is evidenced in much of the reading I was doing before I came in this evening.

If I could touch on something else, the Minister spoke about working with the Department of Transport, and possibly with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. A bugbear of mine is when roads are upgraded, they are an asset to everybody who has chipped in. The State has chipped in a significant amount of money. Yet, the process of taking charge is quite difficult and onerous. That might vary from local authority to local authority, but I ask that the Minister would consider speaking about this with her colleagues in the Department of Transport and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. If a road is upgraded, if a hefty investment has been put in by the State, and if the contribution has been made by the local community, I ask that serious consideration would be given to the process of taking in charge in order to ensure that we get better maintained roads into the future, as well as to increase the likelihood of the road surviving its typical life span of 15 to 20 years. I would appreciate if the Minister could comment on that as well.

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