Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

Perhaps the right way forward is for me to arrange for the Deputy to meet the NRA to convey his views directly. The provision of service stations is an objective of the NRA but they must be considered on a case-by-case basis. It is appropriate to locate them in some places but not in others and we do not want to have too many spread out on a single road. We often find that while there is great support for service stations in some areas, people in other areas may be very much against them because they argue they take commerce out of individual towns. There is also an issue whereby private operators want to provide their own service area where one is not provided by the NRA, and they would often have expectations that the NRA will rebuild the road or build over-bridges and so on to facilitate their businesses, which is not realistic in most cases.

This is the reason the matter is left to the NRA. It is not appropriate for a Minister to make decisions on individual cases as to where service areas should be located. The right approach might be for me to organise a direct engagement with the Deputy and the NRA on the matter.

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