Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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70. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if specific funding will be provided to the National Roads Authority in respect of the necessary upgrading of a road which carries a heavy volume of traffic and is inadequate at present for such a level of traffic (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5824/17]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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​The position in remains as outlined in response to PQ40916/16.

Cavan County Council was provided with over €2m in the period 2007-2014 by my Department in connection with this project under the Strategic Non National Road Grants Scheme in order to bring this 75 km route to preliminary design stage.  Due to budgetary constraints it is not possible to progress the scheme further at this point.

The transport element of the Capital Plan sets investment priorities to 2022 and was framed by the conclusions reached in my Department’s Strategic Investment Framework for Land Transport. Based on the findings in that report it is envisaged that maintenance and renewal of the road network will continue to be the main priority over the next period and the bulk of the roads capital budget, over €4 billion, is earmarked for such essential work with a further €600 million allocated for implementation of the PPP road programme which is already underway.  In this context the East/West link was one of the schemes that it was not possible to include given the overall funding envelope available.  The construction cost for a scheme of this magnitude would be in excess of €150 million.