Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Chair. I apologise to the witnesses and the committee. UHL Hospital Group representatives are next door and I am attending that meeting as well. It is a bit of a juggle here sometimes on Wednesdays. At the outset, for transparency I want to say that, beyond being a TD, I am a farmer and IFA member, so I want to put that on public record today. When I have met farmers, I always thought they were on the pig's back if they had one of these greenways proposed through their areas or their fields. I recently met a farmer and he asked me to guess how much was on offer to him to bring a greenway through his land. I told him an agricultural acre at home is about €6,000 so I said presumably it is one third of that and he would be getting some good money. I was appalled to hear what was being offered. It was an insult. For farmers and landowners reading in the local newspaper that such-and-such a greenway would be worth €12 million or €20 million to the local economy, it is an outright insult that they would then be offered a pittance from that purse.

Other speakers have asked about the reassigning of money. How much money has been moved from one project to another? It seems that only a few are being completed and yet the project hangs over landowners and local authorities without many of them progressing at this time. To what extent are funds being reassigned?