Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With regard to national roads, the criteria for the provision of funding should be better set out. The detail with regard to the criteria needs to be provided to this committee and to the Committee of Public Accounts. It needs to be provided in a very defined way with regard to weighting, the interaction with the national planning framework, which has to be gutted anyway, climate change proposals and Road Safety Authority, RSA, data, which was a finding of the report launched yesterday. Some information has been provided to members of the Committee of Public Accounts. The level of detail I expect is not there. This is the real issue for me. The decision-making process which will come about for the national capital plan is critical. I want to be confident that I can see in advance in a transparent way the methodology and criteria used to make those decisions. It is good for the TII as well. We are from three different counties and we are all fighting for our own counties, which is fine. Independently, the TII has to make its decisions. That is its job and I respect that. We should be able to see, in a transparent way, the full criteria and the weighting on the criteria. In previous evidence I was told that time saving was the biggest part of it, that safety issues were a huge part and that there were a number of other issues. Other issues are the interaction with the requirements under the national planning framework and the changes that are coming about regarding the movement of vehicles and changes under the climate change legislation. All of these things are a component of that.

I would like to see all of that wrapped up in a nice bow and given to both committees in a level of detail I have not seen yet so that we can do that. I would appreciate if we could get all of that soon and well in advance of the capital plan. When I see the capital plan coming out, I want to be able to put each one of them in, be able to stand over it and not have to engage in any political bickering about why some projects were selected over others. I urge the TII to go on more than less, by which I mean to give out as much information as possible. The TII will have to put it all together and make decisions. I will raise it with the board if I do not feel those criteria, including the detail, are provided.