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

My diary is published.

It was a real pleasure to have a chance to visit west Cork again. It is surely one of the most beautiful parts of the country. I was really glad to meet people in different parts of it and talk to them on this occasion. I got to visit Bandon, Clonakilty, Timoleague and also Courtmacsherry. While I did not meet the people the Deputy mentioned, I met a number of councillors who impressed on me the need to find more funding for road maintenance and restoration. In Senator Lombard's office in Bandon, I met with business groups from the town. They specifically raised the issue of the relief road. These are issues on my agenda.

The issue of road maintenance and restoration is not a problem unique to Cork or west Cork. It is coming up all over the country that the budgets allocated to local authorities to repair and restore roads are not going as far as they went in previous years because of inflation. We acknowledge that. In recognition of that the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, allocated an additional €22 million for local and regional road maintenance in the past week or so. We are examining whether it is possible to find more money within the transport budget to do that. I do not know if that is possible yet but it is something we are certainly considering. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, is working on finding additional funding for local improvement schemes which are very important for rural laneways in particular. The budget for that has increased considerably under the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, in recent years.

I was briefed on the Bandon relief road project when I met the business leaders in Bandon and I have agreed to follow up on it. Every year we have a budget of about €250 million for new roads. The Deputy will be familiar with the works at Dunkettle which are almost complete. There has been huge investment there and it will benefit people from Cork city and west Cork. It is never the case that there is enough funding to advance every project that we would like to advance, but there are projects that we will be able to advance in the future.

See this speech in context