John Clendennen (Offaly, Fine Gael)

Following up on my previous point, I formally request the action plan on the night-time economy, particularly from a rural perspective. I fully acknowledge the work that has been done in large cities and larger towns but how is it planned to actively address the issues that are there at the moment? There are towns and villages with literally no transport after dark. The night-time piece is particularly important. We have seen a decimation of our nightclubs, in particular, as people just cannot get home in the early hours of the morning.

How will the NTA address that and what is the timeframe? I would appreciate a formal response with its action plan on that.

Town bus services and the Local Link are fantastic services. When I highlight issues, it is to build and strengthen it rather than criticise it. Edenderry with a population of 8,000 has multiple bus stops and yet Tullamore with double the population does not have dedicated bus services. I read the NTA report indicating the towns in the pipeline. How does it determine what town is next on the priority list? Does population come into that evaluation process? I am sure this is replicated throughout the country, but I am best served by giving local examples. With a town like Birr and a capital town like Tullamore in a particular county where there is a private operator, it is following a commercially viable model, which is understandable. Where there are gaps in the service, how does the NTA plan to intervene?

I return to the flowchart. Looking at some of the funding allocations that are coming out now for flood mitigation, it could be on a byroad 20 km from the nearest town and that has to go to the Department for approval. We seem to have stripped autonomy from local authorities. It is now all about specific projects rather than schemes. I would be happy to get the witnesses' thoughts about this. Where there is flooding on the side of a mountain and a local engineer has put an application together to go to Dublin to get approval, we would be much better served recognising that this is all about local knowledge. Should there not be more autonomy at local level, particularly with area engineers, which would strip out a lot of this process? I will give one example. We have talked about roadmaps, pinch points, planning and all the rest of it. Where we have a potential solution with local area engineers working with local public representatives, surely we should be letting the funding follow directly to individual projects rather than saying the Department has a climate mitigation or flood risk mitigation scheme with €50,000 for Offaly and asking the council to send the Department its thoughts on how the council wants to spend it. Surely we should be giving more autonomy to local authorities.