Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right. Local authorities are strapped for cash but so is central government. The cutback in funding for roads has been dramatic. The cutback in the National Roads Authority's budget is nearly 80% from its peak. This has been done to protect front-line services such as health, education, the Garda and others. As a result, all we are able to do this year, where something is not a public private partnership, is maintenance and repair work. If I get extra money, I can reconsider this but without extra money, I cannot. To give the Deputy an indication of what it means, the amount of money going to Donegal County Council from my Department for the repair and maintenance of roads in the county is €18.5 million which is a lot of money, but if I was to take €3 million from that figure for the bridge he proposes - it would not come from something else - it would amount to a 20% cut in the maintenance budget for the rest of the county. That would not be the right decision for County Donegal. Money is finite and there is no pot of unallocated moneys. If I did put money towards new bridges, I would have to take it from the funding for maintenance works. Therefore, to build this one bridge in County Donegal, we would have to cut the maintenance budget for the entire county by 20%, which would not be a good idea.

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