James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be unhelpful for me to comment on the particular facility in terms of the details of it because I am not informed on it. It would be unfair to the project. However, I take the Deputy's point that phase 2 will now follow and will undoubtedly provide important services. I think her suggestion is that it would be better to do the whole thing at once, if I understand her correctly. That is a natural, intuitive argument to make. I have seen elsewhere that sometimes projects can be overly ambitious - I am not making any comment on this particular project but am speaking in a general sense - and have had a large scope and a large vision but ultimately have failed to get off the ground or failed to get to where they need to be. Sometimes it is better to take it in chunks and in stages and to meet funding with ambition at a moment in time, address the immediate needs and then look to build on that. There are horses for courses, and different courses can be taken in different projects. SOLAS is engaging intensively with GRETB and, as I said, that process should progress next month.

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