Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for her response. My challenge in dealing with issues like this is that as Minister my role, as the Senator well knows, is to determine the funding that is available and allocate that to local authorities. With the knowledge they have of their localities, which is not available to me, they would spend that money in the best way possible for their areas and be able to respond to local needs and decide which projects should go ahead and which should not in a way that I cannot.

However, I was struck, when I received the Senator's motion after it was selected and we were preparing to respond to it, by the fact that money has already been spent to construct a pedestrian span that is now lying in storage and this money was spent by a semi-State body for which I have direct responsibility. It is a striking situation that taxpayers' money has already been spent on a deck to make that part of it safe and that cannot be installed because the funding is not available to cover off either side of it. That sounds like a very unusual and specific difficulty.

While as Minister I must respect how Galway County Council spends its funding, given that a deck has been built by Iarnród Éireann, which also has very scarce resources, I will contact the county council and Iarnród Éireann and its chief executive, to see if anything can be done to move this forward. When I get into the allocation of funding, I will always allocate the total funding in the expectation that the Senator and the other local representatives will have the best idea of how it can be spent. It is an unusual position to be in the Seanad and to find out that work has been done on part of a bridge that has been in storage since 2013.