Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for outlining the strategic benefits of this project. I work with the IDA in my role as the Minister of State with responsibility for financial services. I have a very strong interest in making sure sites are available and ready throughout the island. The Ireland for finance strategy has a very strong regional focus and it is very important to me that suitable sites are available. It would be a matter of embarrassment to bring somebody to a green field with no road. I certainly hope that will not persist and that TII is listening, even on a Thursday evening, to a debate in the House to hear the case the Deputy had repeatedly made for the development of this road.

Again, if we are to be strategic about the development of this island, concentrating on facilities, planning, the grid infrastructure network the Deputy described, the interconnector network, the roads network and the planning for ports in respect of the development of offshore wind in the Atlantic, the opportunity that gives us in sustainability and jobs into the future is quite extraordinary. Every single part of the State needs to be alive and awake to that, and to make plans for it. It seems to me TII is as responsible as any other entity in regard to its own planning. It would appear from the advocacy the Deputy made regarding the road, that this project fits in in every possible way. I certainly hope it progresses.

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