Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I understand the crying need to which the Senator refers. We have tried to meet part of that need and similar demands from other parts of the country. The allocation to County Monaghan for regional and local roads increased from €7.684 million in 2017 to €9.097 million this year, which is a fair increase. I will not give the Senator the detailed figures as I am sure he is familiar with them. They included grants for restoration improvement, restoration maintenance, discretionary grants, bridge rehabilitation, specific grants for strategic regional and local roads, safety improvement works, speed limits, training grants and drainage works, which make up a total allocation of €9 million. Monaghan County Council also received a community involvement scheme, CIS, allocation of €186,000 and ring-fenced funding is being made available for that.

People in Monaghan should not feel forgotten but they are entitled to feel that the funding we have provided is inadequate. We accept that funding is not sufficient to meet the demands of all the local authorities. However, we have increased the allocations for roads and we hope to be able to increase them again. As I indicated, 5% of the network needs to be strengthened and a further 5% seated every year. Calling on this level of expenditure every year will be very demanding and we do not expect to reach a steady state for another couple of years.

I will be delighted to come to Monaghan and will do so. I do not want to give the Senator a date now because people tend to keep me to dates and then I tend not to keep to them myself. I visited the county last year and I will do so again in the foreseeable future because I understand that there is nothing like seeing this for oneself to know how critical the difficulties are.