Michael Lowry (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Llewellyn to the meeting and congratulate and compliment him on his appointment, which comes at a crucial time for TII. His CV is very impressive and he has the knowledge and experience across a range of transport-related disciplines that should allow him to give strong leadership to TII. I wish him well in his role.

He is only nine days into it but I am sure he has been briefed by his staff. He said in his opening statement that "in an ideal world", funding would be available to support all projects that are included in the national development plan. In the briefing he would have had from executives of TII, did they establish what the likely shortfall will be?

In regard to the budget that is available to TII, Mr. Llewellyn placed a lot of emphasis on maintaining existing assets across the country, on both road and Luas.

What is the ratio of spend on capital and maintenance in that area?

I will raise one other issue, which is that many people in Ireland feel very disgruntled, and at times suffer huge inconvenience, when there is an incident on one of our motorways. There is a serious question mark over our response times. If there is any kind of incident on a motorway at present, the tailbacks and delays last many hours. The synchronisation and co-ordination between members of the Garda leaves a lot to be desired at times. I can understand that when there is a major incident and a fatality, but I have seen a couple of cases in recent times where a road has been closed from 12 a.m. until 8 p.m. Even by 8 p.m. members of the Garda still have not got their act together to direct traffic. I ask Mr. Llewellyn to take that up with his officials in TII and ask them what procedures and practices can be put in place to improve our response time to reopening roadways following incidents.