Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I read the opening statement. Only as the Leas-Chathaoirleach was speaking did I realise that a 130-page document is buried in the file tabs. I have a lot of bedtime reading for the next few nights.

I have a few questions. The first concerns a very general point. It is always excellent to have different agencies and entities come before the committee to engage with us. It is democracy in action. Many of the elected representatives present were, at one time, county councillors. I remember that up to 2019, when I was still a local authority member, it was a nightmare if you wanted to deal with TII on any issue regarding a regional or national road in your locality, and there were many such issues. You would raise an issue at a council meeting, and would be told by the engineer this would be referred to TII, but it was like the football socks in the laundry basket; it would go missing and would never be seen again. So many issues local authority members throughout the country bring forward as motions get filtered off to TII and are never responded to. From a communications point of view, TII is very good at engaging with us. We have an Oireachtas email address and there is a very linear pattern. I will not name TII's people on the ground but I find them excellent. I want to make that clear. It is not a criticism of them. It is a criticism of how something goes in, gets turned up and comes back out again. There must be a better way for TII to engage with local authorities so that the elected mandate of local authority members is respected and their issues can be fed up and down. I would like to hear what the representatives have to say on that. Do they agree that there are deficiencies in that regard?