Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the efforts that have been made with the Department of Transport. I have been a long-time advocate of the Department of Transport supporting the local improvement scheme. The Department should not have abdicated all responsibility back in 2016. It should have retained its commitment to co-funding the scheme, as far as I am concerned. I wish to acknowledge the efforts that were made over those years by both the current Minister and her predecessor, the former Minister, Deputy Ring, to get the scheme moving again and to start clearing the lists.

From a Kerry perspective, any money that ever came into the county was rapidly spent. The local authority went through the previous list very quickly and showed that once it received the funding, it was spent and put to good use. I am sure that will happen again with any funding that is allocated in future. I ask the Minister to bear that in mind when she is making her decisions.

We will not get through the list, in any acceptable amount of time, without that level of co-operation from other Departments. I support the Minister in her efforts. The other Departments must step up to the plate and acknowledge the role that has to be played by the Department of Transport, in particular, in acknowledging the use of these roads for walking and cycling.

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