I ask the Taoiseach about the N72, the main artery road from Waterford to Killarney. There is a section of that road in Meenskeha near Cullen in my constituency of Cork North-West in respect of which funding is sought from the Department of Transport and TII. We have received an allocation this year for phase one of €2.5 million. That has been completed in recent days and the money has been drawn down by Cork County Council. It is looking for more funding to do the phase two element. Cork County Council executives have written to the Department and TII seeking further funding. I would appreciate if the Taoiseach would discuss that with the Department to see if we can get more funding as the year goes on.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. It seems all roads lead to Killarney at the moment. There are a lot of requests in. I will follow that up with the county council. There are a lot of requests in from different local authorities in respect of roads. The costs of them are increasing in terms of when they go to tender and so on. There was a major investment yesterday of €450 million. I will look at the issue and see where we are at. The objective is to try to progress through the different stages as best we can.