More than €1m has been invested in an unopened motorway service station near Gorey, Co Wexford, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The project on the M11 has been labelled "an appalling waste of money" by Fine Gael TD Fergus O'Dowd at the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport.

He was speaking after it emerged that it is costing the taxpayer €19,000 a month to maintain.

Mr O'Dowd pointed out that not "not one cup of tea has been sold, or one bar of chocolate consumed" at the facility to date.

Michael Nolan, Chief Executive of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, was efore the committee addressing concerns about motorway service stops and capital funding for roads.

He explained that the unopened Gorey service area and its junction with the M11 motorway was constructed as part of the Newlands Cross and M11 Arklow to Rathnew scheme and was completed in July 2015.

He told the committee that the delay in opening the facility is a result of a legal challenge taken by one of the unsuccessful tenderers for the provision of three motorway services stations.

These three stations are on the M6 motorway east of Athlone, on the M9 motorway south of Kilcullen in Co Kildare and the fit out and operation of the service area on the M11 10km north of Gorey.

Mr Nolan said: "The legal challenge and the consequent delays to the award of the motorway service area contract have resulted in TII arranging for the protection of the investment in the Gorey service area building and facilities.

"It is necessary to safeguard the expenditure already invested in the Gorey Service Area by providing measures for security and daily upkeep of the building.

"The expenditure to end of 2017 for protecting the Gorey Service Area facilities to date is of the order of €600,000, with monthly costs of €19,500 until the handover to the concessionaire."

He said he expects that following the contract award, the service station should be ready to open within four months.

Meanwhile, Mr Nolan has said the current level of maintenance funding for roads is totally insufficient

He pointed out that TII's current funding allocation for road maintenance was cut by approximately €6m (16%) to €31.6m.

Mr Nolan said that this unanticipated cut again accelerates the ongoing cuts to maintenance budgets that have taken place since 2008.

He said: "Our modern state-of-the-art roads systems incur significantly more maintenance and operational costs than do the older legacy roads, but instead of increased maintenance funding to cater for this, our funding has been sharply reduced."

Mr Nolan said an inevitable consequence of the erosion of maintenance budgets is that much essential routine repair and maintenance of pavements and other road assets is not taking place.