Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the delegates. It is important to point out that this occasion was not only about a meeting today. We appreciate that our visitors attended and we acknowledge their input to the conversation. It is also important that we express the viewpoint of the committee on Transport NI, which has nothing to do with the delegates. That message can be conveyed. I ask the members from the North to work with us and try to explore the possibility of having a meeting with their colleagues in the North.

I will pick up on Senator White's point although I will not get into the areas where I disagree with her. In regard to forward planning, there are great examples where the national roads design office, NRDO, is doing its work, especially in Donegal town. I remember that in the early 1990s, the NRDO had a design ready for the Clar-Barnesmore project. This point can be clarified but I understand that €7 million was supposed to go towards a project in Dublin which was not ready. The next thing we knew was that Clar-Barnesmore was ready to go because the design had been done. The Deputy's message is the right one. Obviously the delegates are working within funding constraints. However, we could try to lay out a vision, have the design made and the preparatory work done. For example, there is a design for the Letterkenny-Lifford-Strabane section. Everything is a precursor to something else happening. The Lifford-Strabane bridge is ready to go but the A5 project must be done first. This is where the political fear creeps in. If one big project is not ready to go, what happens to the rest of the funding?

As a committee, we ask the delegates to stay in touch with us and help us to try to arrive at a degree of consistency in developing a vision. A vision is quite simple. We can look at all the inter-city connectivity from the capital to areas throughout the country and see all the good work the NRA has done, providing fantastic roads to Galway and Limerick, the south east and Cork. Then we look at the missing pieces of the jigsaw. This is not about entitlement. There may have been a bit of parochial politics today but this is more than that. It is about disenfranchisement, neglect, partition and all those elements of an entire geographical section of our country that was isolated as a result of lack of connectivity. We want to work with the delegates. If they can help us then we, as a committee, will help them to work towards their ambitions and aspirations.

I ask the members to use their influence in their own positions, even if only to create public awareness of the work going on behind the scenes. I am aware that officials are meeting at very high levels within Departments and local authorities, but the public must be made aware of this work. Members of the public will say these roads are not going to go ahead simply because the funding is not available. There is a negative attitude towards the ambition that we, as politicians, are trying to realise. Whatever the visitors can do to help is welcome, even if it is only to raise more public awareness about how the committee could act as a facilitator. We have met on this issue before. It is important to keep them alive. It is about fairness, justice and equality and about looking at the benefits of opening up an entire section of this country that was never opened up before. We are all singing from the same hymn sheet in that respect.

We will not suspend the meeting but will take the next part of the session. We invite the delegates from InterTradeIreland to take their seats.