Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I accept that. There is significant oversight. The Department has oversight of the NTA, which is the approving authority. We do regular overviews of the broad range of projects going through. The NTA has specific oversight with the local authority at the project level. It is important to be able to measure success and accountability. I will make two other relevant points. One of the characteristics in 2022 and 2023 was high inflation. We had significant material and contractor inflation coming out of the war in Ukraine and higher energy prices leading through that inflationary period. It has thankfully come to an end, but that was quite significant. With regard to active travel, there was a period as we started to ramp up this investment where there were different sorts of solutions. People will be aware that a lot of areas had wands drilled into the road and space was segregated in that way, or there were other technical ways to create a safe space. We are starting to see an evolution in some of that. On a lot of roads now there is just a small lip to a segregated pathway - it has to be segregated - with a particular surface. The advantage, as we have learned with these solutions over the past three or four years, is that it is now turning into quite a standardised approach. The design manual for cycling infrastructure will help a lot with this. We need to standardise. That brings various benefits. It reduces the cost, but it also reduces the length of time in construction, because you have teams that are used to how they do things, and they can run down a road and deliver quickly. I do not know the specifics of the Ashbourne case, which the Deputy mentioned. I accept what he says. There may be other reasons for delays. It may not have had cost implications. You could have a gas main or some other issue. You have to wait for the gas network company to repair it and so on. The delay might not necessarily be due to a project overrun from the contractor doing the cycling provision. However, I agree that we need to work fast. In that way things are also more efficient and less expensive.