Galway Bay fm newsroom - The Government has issued a response to claims that the Taoiseach blocked EU funding for Galway Airport and the Western Rail Corridor.
It's after new documents reveal an application for EU funding for transport projects in the west and northwest was dropped during his tenure as Transport Minister.
The Department of the Taoiseach claims the projects were excluded because the country could not afford them.
Projects such as the western rail corridor and the upgrading of Galway and Sligo airports were deleted from an EU-wide transport programme in 2011.
Newly disclosed documents reveal the decision was made following an intervention from then Transport Minister Leo Varadkar.
The Department of the Taoiseach has this evening released a press statement addressing today's revelations.
It says the inclusion of capital projects on the EU's Ten-T transport programme had little bearing on the funding for such projects.
It adds the vast majority of the funding required for the projects in question would still have had to come from the state coffers.
A spokesperson says the country simply did not have the resources at that stage to commit to that level of investment, given it had just emerged from the worst economic crash in its history.
The statement also points out that despite extreme economic conditions at that time, the Gort to Tuam motorway - the largest ever infrastructure project in the west - was initated under the watch of then Transport Minister Leo Varadkar.
