Road Network
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17
============================================================

Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare

I listened intently to the contribution of the Senator and will certainly report his views back to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. He has rightly identified that there is strong demand from the people he represents, as well as from the county councillors in the area. It is always a good sign when the local authorities work with councillors to identify the priorities. I do not want to state the obvious but there is always a pie which must be split in so many different ways. Where there is an element of unanimity in terms of identifying the roads that are in greatest need, that works well and it is important to relay that to the Department and the Minister. I have found from experience in my own county that while one would like to get it all done in the first year, if one picks the priorities and works through them over five or six years, one gets a hell of a lot of work done. Cavan and Monaghan have been very successful in that regard in recent years. When I was just a young lad there was always talk of potholes in Cavan and Monaghan. Indeed, I think the people there even elected a pothole candidate but we have moved on from those dark days, thankfully, because of people like Senator Gallagher and others who have championed the cause and have done such good work in representing the area and ensuring, rightly, that it gets its fair share of funding. I am sure that will continue with the Senator's continued assistance.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-17