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

I will look at that. I hear what the Deputy is saying about the need for strategic corridors to the north west. That will involve a variety of different projects, not just roads but also investment in rail and bus services. That is why we have a difficult budget allocation process. The rolling out of further Connecting Ireland rural bus services requires a great deal of funding.

On the Deputy's first point, I agree that there are many instances where small- or medium-scale investment on roads for road safety improvements, in particular, should be considered. That is why in last year's budget we allocated specific additional funding. I do not have the exact figure in front of me but from memory, I believe it was roughly €20 million. That funding was designed to be used for exactly that purpose, namely, to deal with sections of road, particularly on national routes, where speeds tend to be high and there are two lanes of traffic with no segregation and also traffic coming on to the national road. That presents particular safety issues. We specifically informed TII that we wanted to focus on those as well as the big and very small projects. I fully agree with the Deputy that medium-scale interventions to improve safety have to be a real focus.

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