Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I can confirm this morning that we are working our way through the various impacts of the storm damage and we will continue to engage on that. I also acknowledge that the Government has been increasing public funding. I am not directing this at the Deputy but I hear public bodies speaking as though they are speaking at a time of reduction, while public spending has only gone in one direction and that is up. I absolutely assure the Deputy that Tipperary County Council has received more support across a variety of funding heads from this Government than it did in previous years. I also acknowledge the funding we provided for the main street in Tipperary town and the ongoing works on the N24 from Cahir to Limerick. I think €2.7 million was allocated to that. However, the Deputy referenced specific issues, including storm damage and the impact of the war. We need to work our way through these in a methodical fashion. However, I have to make the point - and it is not specific to Tipperary - that we cannot have a situation where local authorities find themselves surprised by adverse weather, climate change and storms. Sometimes things can be worse than we expect but we need to get better at planning and factoring into our roads budget and other budgets that damage can happen to infrastructure due to adverse weather. I will ask the Minister to come back to the Deputy. --- 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/dail/2026-05-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-14