Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In fairness, it is not the Minister or anyone else who said it is wrong. The scheme works if a person puts in an application and has the money. Some people could be on the list but when the money is to be collected, the person might not have it and the allocation goes to the next person on the list. That is the way it works.

In fairness to the council, it will look at all the different roads. Let us suppose there are three or four houses on a road with potholes everywhere and further down the road a farmer is going up with a tractor to three or four fields. Obviously, the stretch where the houses are situated will be done first. That is common sense.

The councils send in lists to the Department. In fairness, it is a good scheme. However, one thing is needed. In Galway, probably 200 roads are under the scheme at the moment. We are getting 15 roads done in this round. Can the Minister envisage that there might be a little more in the kitty towards the back end of the year, perhaps in July or August? Would it be possible to put a further €10 million into the scheme? I know that in Galway and in the Minister's county - this applies in particular in the west of Ireland - we have many small boreens that are not council roads. Can the Minister facilitate something for them in that way?

Deputy Ó Cuív and myself have just spoken about something else for the Department to consider. Can the Department get onto the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government? In some of the smaller villages there are unfinished estates. At the time of the bust there were no bonds. I know a certain amount of money is going from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Can we speed up the last of that allocation? It would help the tidy towns and, as the Minister rightly pointed out, they are doing Trojan work.