James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to outline one fundamental concern to the Minister, which I have mentioned previously at the committee in his absence. While he is here with me, however, it is important to say that there are flaws with the system for the national allocations that go to national roads and national secondary roads through TII's funding budgets.

One very clear example of that, with which I know the Minister is very familiar at this stage, is the N73 road in north Cork. We have a situation where TII was releasing detailed plans in terms of its annual expenditure but was not honouring some of the items that were covered within that documentation. I have a very serious concern as a rural Deputy and a Fianna Fáil Deputy that those budgets are not being honoured. What I suspect we are seeing, about which I need to get clarification, is around its annual budgets. It appears that money is being spent on other projects, therefore, smaller projects, which are also important to many communities, are not getting the funding that had been budgeted for them at the start of the year. The N73 was a very important example of that whereby €1.5 million had been allocated in January but when it came to the time for that budget to be actually spent, the money was unavailable. That is completely unacceptable.

I raised this issue with the Minister already, particularly during our meeting with the Taoiseach. It is important when those annual allocations are made that sufficient budgets are given and money is ring-fenced in order that those works can progress. They are fundamentally extraordinarily important in terms of road safety and the N73. It is an extremely dangerous road and it needs increased funding. Cork County Council has taken all the steps it has been asked to take by TII in order to prepare that road to go the construction phase so it can do the upgrade and safety works that are badly needed in the north Cork area. I ask the Minister to look individually at that particular issue because it is an anomaly that I do not understand. I do not really understand how State agencies can get away with doing these types of things. It is just not good practice from an accounting point of view to make budgets and then not honour them within a financial year, and that is precisely what happened in this case. Is that something the Minister can commit to looking into for me?