Anthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister is here to take this question himself as he was a city councillor himself and will appreciate my point. Heretofore, many councillors were not aware of their powers. I would like to see more powers devolved to councillors for roads programmes. When I was a councillor in the late 1990s, there was a three year roads programme which councillors could debate. Nowadays, it seems to be cloak-and-dagger type stuff with engineers, who mostly are inside an office looking at Google Maps, deciding roads programmes with no input from councillors who are on the ground. Will the Minister indicate if there will be increased powers for local authority councillors with regard to decisions on roads programmes?

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