Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It has to get through planning. The Government has to make decisions on a sequential basis and that has to be the next key issue. Something being in the existing national development plan is not the best way of securing funding. In truth, if one said that all the projects being in the existing NDP means they will receive guaranteed funding, they would break the budget ten times over. As I said, what I believe gives the best guarantee and certainty around funding is a real commitment to support bypasses first. Ardee ticks exactly the right boxes for the sort of project we should be supporting. I am saying that here and I hope to say exactly that in the NDP review. We have to give Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, certain flexibility in that regard. We have to assess the planning stream and the work stream. I believe, however, that what limited resources we have should go to bypasses first before anything else. In my mind, that is the greatest security for the town of Ardee compared to anything written in the existing NDP.

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