Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The Senator has done his homework. He will have noted from the Estimates – a matter which disappoints me – that the CLÁR allocation for this year was reduced from somewhere in the region of €12.9 million – which probably translates to approximately £10 million – to approximately €9 million this year. That is a disappointment. However, the good news is that by handling the funding in a clever manner, I will be able to do as much with it this year as I was able to do with the considerably larger sum last year.

The reason for this is easy to explain. At the end of the year, approximately €7 million was spent without matching funding, which is normally required under CLÁR on class three roads. However, all of the funding we spent this year was invested in matching schemes. With the nine, rather than seven, matching funding schemes this year, I am confident that Members will see as much work done this year as was done last year under the scheme.