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

Deputy Moynihan's colleague, Deputy Creed, has raised this issue of a Garda station Macroom with me many times. We are working on the issue. I met the Minister for Justice, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the Office of Public Works recently about it. A new station is needed in Macroom quite urgently, as well as one in Clonmel.

The Deputy is correct to say the difficulty is that it has been rolled into a wider public private partnership, PPP, project involving two Garda stations, one in Macroom and the other in Clonmel, and the Hammond Lane court complex in Dublin. It may have been a good idea at the time but it clearly has not worked out. Officials are working on decoupling those projects, which would allow us to proceed to construction in Macroom and Clonmel within months. Hammond Land would then be a stand-alone PPP, which may take a bit longer. We are working on that. It is heading in the right direction, but I am not in a position to confirm that we can do it just yet. We are working on it.

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