Mr. Fred Barry:

First, with regard to main contractors and payments to subcontractors, I share the views the Deputy has expressed about the moral implications and the immorality of subcontractors not being paid for work done. I am sure the local authorities would share that view. However, although we may now have it with the Construction Contracts Bill being passed, what we have lacked is the ability to do anything about it. I was not aware the Construction Contracts Bill had gone through but I know that, at earlier stages, it included provisions that allowed subcontractors who were not being paid to essentially attach payments going through. We will ensure, of course, that the Bill as passed gets implemented on road schemes.

In the absence of that measure, as we have discussed in this committee on previous occasions, the local authority, the NRA and other State agencies have no vires, no role or no way of interfering in the contractual relationship between the main contractor and the subcontractors. One can look at something and say one does not like it and that it is wrong, but one has to have a statutory basis to do anything. We have not had the statutory basis. Nonetheless, we will implement the Construction Contracts Bill as passed - I can guarantee the Deputy that.

On the prioritisation of route corridors and where they come from, over the years the primary prioritisation has come out of national development plans and governmental policies. For example, the national development plan in 2000 included the basic principles of delivering the motorways between Dublin and the other major cities - it included more detail than that, of course, but that was the genesis of that particular prioritisation. That development plan was updated and superseded by Transport 21 some years later, which in turn was superseded by the National Development Plan 2007-13. The strategic prioritisation and, very often, the identification of specific routes comes out of policy documents and policy plans led by the Government.

Occasionally, we will be given direction on specific routes and we will be given money that is dedicated to advancing specific routes. Beyond that, the prioritisation is done through the application of the project appraisal rules and guidelines which are published by the Department of Finance and which are added to by the Department of Transport for application as they apply to agencies within the transport family. Through those, potential schemes are assessed under what one would consider the standard headings, which include economy, safety, environment and so on. There is a standard framework for evaluation, and it is through it that evaluation of competing projects is done. Within those, the values that are ascribed to certain aspects are not decided at our discretion within the authority, but we are given values to use. For example, we are given values to use for the cost of a death or the cost of an accident.

We factor in those values and carry out those assessments for each project. Projects such as those currently included in the PPP programme are a very long time in gestation.

With regard to the introduction last summer of the Government's stimulus programme, the range of projects to be selected will be those that have completed or almost completed the statutory processes. The committee will be aware that getting a project to the point of proposing it to An Bord Pleanála takes years. Bringing a project through An Bord Pleanála can take as little as nine months but in some cases it can be three or four years before a project has completed that process. For the Government to proceed or for us to propose a project for a stimulus programme, in general we are considering those which are relatively advanced in the programme. For example, the Gort to Tuam road, the New Ross bypass and Gorey to Enniscorthy were clearly ones that could be delivered. They had completed the statutory process, they all give very high economic return on the investment and they are all of strategic benefit and not just of local benefit. The Gort to Tuam road is on the Atlantic corridor, while the Enniscorthy to Gorey road is on the N11. Connecting Rosslare by dual carriageway as far as Belfast has been a strategic plan for this country for a very long time, and similarly New Ross and the east-west corridor. There are large volumes of traffic through New Ross and it has large and very costly traffic jams at all times. There is no question as to whether these are worthwhile projects.

Without wishing to be argumentative, I would take issue with Deputy O'Donovan's suggestion that we have not invested in the Limerick region in recent years. I direct his attention to the southern ring road, to the Limerick tunnel and the continuation to Ennis. I am not suggesting that more investment is not needed and I am not discounting-----