Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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232. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he plans to allocate funding towards the development of Fintra bridge in County Donegal in 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17247/14]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The improvement and maintenance of regional and local roads in its area, is a statutory function of each road authority in accordance with the provisions of section 13 of the Roads Act, 1993.  Works on such roads are a matter for the relevant local authority to be funded from its own resources supplemented by State road grants.   

The Specific Improvement Grants Scheme is being curtailed from 2014 onward in order to maximise the funding available for repair and strengthening work.  In lieu of the Specific Improvement Grant Programme, applications were sought for minor bridge repair works (which is a subset of the current Specific Grant Programme) for 2014. Donegal County Council applied for funding for eight projects under this grant category and Fintra bridge was not among the Council's applications for funding.

It is also important to re-iterate that the role of Exchequer grants for regional and local roads is to supplement Councils like Donegal County Council in their own resources spending in this area.