Mr. Peter Walsh:

I will not comment on land-use strategy and the commercial developments that might come about in that regard. All I can say is that there have been various times when there were different expedients that seemed to be supporting the notion that something significant had to be done with that section of road and it is just no longer on the list for funding. It will not be receiving an allocation this year other than for the safety interventions.

I refer to the review of the national development plan. I am not suggesting that anybody lobby for any particular project. However, the concerns of a local authority roads authority of where deficiencies in the network should be addressed should be focused on in the review of the NDP in general.

Regarding noise, when we develop a project, the environmental impacts of that project need to be mitigated and, as such, noise barriers might be included in the scope of the project. There would be various sensitive receptors and we would have to mitigate that noise. In that case, we are responsible for funding the provision of those and we need to maintain them. Outside of that, our role in noise was contemplated by the State in a revision of the Roads Act some years ago. The clause that would have made it our responsibility to mitigate noise from roads was removed. It is not as if nobody thought about it rather our legislators thought about it and removed it from the Roads Act. Where we are involved in environmental noise and noise from roads is we are a mapping agency for noise assessment, as is Irish Rail for rail projects. Therefore, we undertake noise mapping and we make that available to the local authorities. The EPA has overall responsibility in respect of environmental noise. The local authority is obliged to develop a noise mitigation plan. If any aspect of that was required to be constructed within a motorway reservation, for example, or alongside a national road, we would be involved in the assessment, approval and facilitation of that happening. Where there is a circumstance of that nature, it is a public health issue, so I do not see it as appropriate even for us to be determining what level of mitigation should be required for a given community. In a significant number of cases, we funded and progressed projects where there were subsequent developments entirely outside of our control. The planning authority can zone land and build houses. It would be impossible for us to budget for the mitigation of circumstances such as that.