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

In terms of being upgraded, it is important to bear in mind how the Connecting Europe Facility works. I meet people about the TEN-T and the Connecting Europe Facility and they seem to think it is a big source of European money. It is actually not. If something is included on the TEN-T network, it imposes an obligation on Government to upgrade it and the Union will only provide a very small portion of that cost. There seems to be a sense that this is like the old days when big Structural Funds were available to Ireland from the EU. As that is not the case, anything we include imposes a very significant cost on the Exchequer for which there is a very small contribution from the EU.

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