Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2023-04-18
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Éamon Ó Cuív (FF), Galway West

Beidh sé deacair. Mar is eol don Leas-Cheann Comhairle, tá an obair seo ag teastáil go práinneach ar an mbóthar seo agus caithfidh mé cás láidir a dhéanamh.
The N59, as a coastal national secondary route, was included in Transport 21. The idea was that those parts of the country that were far away from national primary routes would have decent national secondary routes to service them. There are 113 km of N59 in Galway – 80 km from Galway to Clifden and 33 km from Clifden to Leenane. Priority was given to the section from Galway to Clifden. Ten years ago, planning permission was given to upgrade the N59 from Oughterard to Maam Cross, but there was a condition on the planning permission, namely, that method statements had to be agreed with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, which is part of the Minister of State's Department and not an independent agency. There was a standoff over these method statements for years. Eventually, agreement was given to do a section of the road from Bunnakill to Maam Cross, which was completed in 2021.
Based on the success of that upgrade of the road – anyone who travels it knows how safe the new section of road is compared with the other section, which is highly dangerous – method statements were submitted to the Department in December 2021. The method statement in respect of the topographical survey was confirmed in July 2022.
Equally, however, new instructions have been issued by the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, to libraries changing the procedure whereby young people can get books out. As it was previously, once a young person went from being aged under 12 to being over 12, he or she was then able to access books in the young adult section for those aged from 12 to 14. When young people reached 15, they were then able to access young adult books for those aged 15 to 17. This policy has now been changed. Young people now have to get express, written permission from their parents to move on and to be able to access books. This seems to be an incredible concession to these far-right activists and giving them precisely what they want. It is creating a scenario whereby a young person could have, for example, a homophobic parent who does not want him or her accessing age-appropriate material, and let me stress this is what we are talking about. Has the Government discussed this matter? Surely this policy should be reversed and young people should be able to get age-appropriate material in the libraries.

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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/2023-04-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-04-18