Mr. Gareth Llewellyn:

I will do my best to answer some of those questions. I will not be able to answer them all. I have not been briefed on the issues relating to the Shannon tunnel that the Deputy flagged. That may be coming. I will ask somebody within TII to address that issue.

I am neutral on the naming of infrastructure. However, TII is a non-political organisation and sometimes names can engender different feelings, which is not something that TII should be exposed to. As I understand it, there is no policy at the moment. Clearly, the board will need to look at that at some point in the future. Different countries around the world take different views on it. There are plenty of names in the US, whereas in the UK there is probably not a single name anywhere - other than those put up by graffiti.

TII is carrying out considerable work on technology on the mapping of lands to help it manage the network better and help it understand the impact of land use on roads and also to ensure that as much information as possible is accessible in the planning process. I do not know about the status of that nor its availability. One of the challenges in releasing information about future road networks is that it runs the risk of infrastructure being put in place that subsequently causes a problem in respect of a particular route. We need to think about that very carefully.

The Deputy made a very interesting point about working with local authorities. As I mentioned earlier, the local authorities are the roads authority for national, regional and local roads within their boundaries. It has come as a bit of a surprise to me that TII is not a roads authority. It may be a matter we need to address in the future. That said, the relationship with local authorities seems to work rather well through the 11 national roads offices we have throughout the country. If there is any sense that that is not working, clearly we would be interested in hearing those experiences so that TII can make the process work better.

The Deputy had many questions and I am not sure if I answered them all. He should feel free to come back to me with any specific issues if he wishes.