Road Projects
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-19
============================================================

Mike Kennelly (FG), Labour Panel

I thank the Minister of State for taking the Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister for Transport. The reply refers to "TIl, in conjunction with the local authorities concerned" and states, "TII ultimately delivers the national roads programme" - absolutely. The Minister of State said the N69 was included in the funding that came down. One of the projects that was done was a school pedestrian crossing in Tarbert that had been mooted about six years ago. It was completed in 2025, and it was in this year's TII allocation. Therefore, to say that the N69 has future funding models is wrong. That is misleading. The N69 got no funding, from west Limerick into north Kerry. To say that the funding has been allocated is misleading; it is for maintenance. It is a €300,000 project on a 1.1 km stretch of road, and it has not been highlighted. Either the Department, TII or Kerry County Council has not got their sums right or no one is talking to each other. It has been prioritised at No. 3. TII is saying it has got the money off the Department and that that is its job done. TII went to Kerry County Council and, lo and behold, No. 3 on the priority list has not been included. I do not know if there has been a breakdown here. I ask that the Minister of State take it back to the Minister to investigate why this stretch of road has for some reason not been included in the maintenance budget for the funding that was drawn down. It is totally out of order, and it is totally disrespectful to the people. I was fighting for this stretch of road for seven years as a county councillor. Either someone does not want it or there is another issue. The Minister of State mentioned the €67 million. We got a bypass in Listowel. That has been going on for 20 years. The drums have been beaten on that as well. However, this section has been totally disrespected.

---

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/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19