Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely, I would love to see it completed. There will be discussions on the matter of the promissory notes. We will discover the implications of that in the near future. As the Deputy knows we will have an early budget this year.

Deputy Ellis asked a very good question about the Road Safety Authority, RSA. If this is not viewed in the broader sense, one could imagine there might be a problem. The real issue is that the RSA is raising more revenue than it ever did, which is why we do not need to allocate it so much. It is a fantastic organisation and is doing a very good job. In addition to its good advocacy work, it is also making more money. The total spend from a safety point of view has not decreased. However, the percentage of funding it is generating itself as opposed to from the Department is changing.

As with roads, we would like to be spending more money on a range of public transport projects. We have prioritised the Luas and a number of other projects to improve the public transport offering to consumers. Considerable investment is going towards closing out the Leap card and the real-time passenger information, RTPI, signs. There is a lot of stuff on technology and improving passenger journeys. Deputy Ellis is well aware we do not have the funding because Sinn Féin's budget document did not allocate extra funding to this area. We are making do with what we have. While I would love to see more, we are trying to spend it wisely to get more passengers on the rail and bus services we are protecting.