Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

I would prefer local authorities to get road works finished by the end of October, which is appropriate, and then rush to get claims in, than to have them wasting time submitting claims and not getting the work done, or doing it too late in the year. We must be fair to local authorities. They do a reasonably good job in this regard.

I know there are difficulties. I will make the allocation of funding clear to the local authorities shortly. I will also repeat what I said last year. That is, I will give them discretion to use their money to focus initially on roads that need repair and to make sure they are repaired as quickly as possible.

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