Mr. Michael Nolan:

That is back on track. We have full approval for a long scheme between Camp and Dingle. We have just started Lispole to Mountoven, a short section. It is at second stage construction.

Up in Donegal, we got approval for Dungloe to Glenties on the N56. That is another substantial scheme. We have full approval from An Bord Pleanála for that. What we are doing is taking off bite-sized chunks. We are taking 4 km sections at a time. By Christmas, we will have completed the second phase of those works. There will be five or six phases in total. We are preparing tender documentation for phase three. As funding allows, we will keep chipping away at those sections.

I refer to two sections of the N56 in Donegal, Dungloe to Glenties and Mountcharles to Inver. Those two sections were mentioned in the capital investment plan and we keep hitting those on a rolling programme of short sections. We will finish one and start the next. That is the plan for that.

We have focused a lot of attention on short sections of national secondaries since 2009. In the Government's Road Safety Strategy 2013-2020, one of the targets given to TII was to progress 150 minor projects over the life of that plan. The best we will do in that period given the funding constraints is 50. We have another 50 of those minor schemes, most of which are secondary routes, in some stage of planning and design. We will bring them to a point where we will have them tender ready, and if funding conditions change, we can react quickly and move those small schemes onto site. We have another 100 minor schemes in the wings on which there is no action at present. They are on our books but we are not progressing them because we cannot overload the system. It is too much to buy the land and go through An Bord Pleanála with too many schemes at present.

Mention was made of the considerable delays on the Carrick-on-Shannon bypass. I am well aware of that. We brought the scheme to the stage of having the statutory orders, the environmental impact statement and the preferred route ready, but that is where it is at. It is quite a big scheme. It is a tricky scheme in terms of the environment. We are crossing the Shannon callows north of Carrick-on-Shannon. That would pick up a lot of the regional roads radiating out of Carrick-on-Shannon and bring relief to the old bridge in Carrick. We have done as much work as we can but we are constrained by the lack of funding. It is on our books. There are 50 major schemes that we have suspended at present and, unfortunately, Carrick-on-Shannon is one of those.

Senator Feighan asked how long it would take to bring a major scheme to planning. Typically, it would take between two and four years to bring a scheme to planning. That is if nothing goes wrong with regard to judicial reviews.

Deputy Sherlock mentioned the mid-term review and adding schemes to that, and the M20 featured in that. Senator O'Donnell asked a number of questions about the current state of progress on the M20. We have approval from the Department now to commence some early activities on that project and we split the scheme into five decision points. The first decision was to do some early activities in advance of the mid-term review of the capital investment plan next year. There are some matters we are getting along with and we will have more information over the next nine months.

The second decision point is to approve the formal commencement of the planning and design and statutory order stage. That stage will cost between €12 million and €15 million. That means procuring engineering firms and environmental consultants to prepare an environmental impact statement, EIS, and bring the scheme in a state that we can bring it back to An Bord Pleanála and prepare to procure and prepare a business case for that scheme. That will take three to three and a half years. The third decision point is the approval of the business case by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, DTTS, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, DPER, and ourselves, and then Government. It is a massive scheme and we need Government approval for it.

The fourth decision point is to approve to submit that scheme to An Bord Pleanála. Once one goes to An Bord Pleanála and it consents to the scheme, one is committing at some stage to buy the land and that brings the State a commitment of between €100 million and €180 million in 2016 prices. That is quite a big decision point.

The final decision, decision No. 5, is Government approval to proceed to commence construction. At that point, that would commit the Government to an investment of approximately €600 million in today's money. The construction could be phased over a number of years. It could be done in two phases. It could be done in four phases. It depends on what route we choose, how we can break it up and where the logical places are where we would break the scheme. We have to go An Bord Pleanála with a full scheme, and whether it is the full 80 km depends on which route it takes.