When this happens, look at the money. Who is paying for it, how are they paying for it, and can the money be used for other projects/programs.
I've been in similar situations where work had to be done on X even though there was little work to do or no point, but there was money. Y had more value, if we could work on it. It was funded from a different source which didn't have money (or did, but not enough to bring us over) and we couldn't use money from X to support Y.
It's a very frustrating situation, fortunately not one I'm in anymore.