I want to raise the issue of disability services. Sooey National School is a small rural school about 13 km from Sligo town. The school has 117 pupils and for the last year or more it has been engaging with the National Council for Special Education with the intention of providing two autism spectrum disorder, ASD, classes because all of the ASD classes in Sligo town are full. The school is making progress in respect of that. It has also applied to the building unit in the Department of Education to build a new gen…

It has done that.

Sooey National School.

The roll number is on the letter.

It is appropriate to recognise that last night there was another tragic death in Sligo, when a man on an e-scooter was killed. That brings the number of deaths on the roads this year to 155, which is the same number that we had for the entirety of last year. This is the tragedy that keeps coming at us. Every weekend or every couple of days, we hear of more people being killed on the roads. It is a terrible tragedy for those families, and for people who are injured and for a whole community that is left to grieve af…

The situation we have in health and the reckless underfunding of the health budget this year will have an effect the length and breadth of the country, nowhere more so than in my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim. As we know, the hospitals all along the western seaboard from Donegal to Limerick and including Sligo are those that have some of the highest rates of people waiting on trolleys to be seen. This is because there is nowhere else for them to go. The promised beds that were supposed to be provided in these hospi…

The budget and the huge underfunding in the HSE affects us all in every constituency around the country. The previous speaker mentioned that all of us are constituency Deputies. We all work with communities that are struggling, trying to survive and trying to manage. The head of the HSE, Bernard Gloster, recently made it plain that they simply cannot be expected to deliver an effective and efficient service on the funding that is in place at present. Across the western seaboard, particularly in the north west and S…

If they do not have a family to do it, what are they going to do? Should they sit in the cold? That is what the Minister of State is telling people; to sit in the cold if they cannot light a fire because nobody going to do it for them. It is absolutely ridiculous. That is the reality for people I know. A man in his nineties was told that if he could not light the fire, that was too bad. The person who is going to help him get out of bed and get dressed in the morning cannot take an extra five minutes to come in and…

The attitude of the Government seems to be that successful people do not need a health service. It is simply not good enough.

We will be supporting this motion. I thank the Rural Independent Group for tabling it. Driver testing delays are affecting people all over the country. I am sure every Deputy from every constituency, rural and urban, has been contacted by people about huge delays and the huge difficulties faced by family members in getting tests. We had the representatives of the RSA and various agencies before the transport committee regarding this matter, and they gave us all sorts of assurances that work was being done to recrui…

New subheads do not cut it. The tragic reality is that people are dying on our roads and the Government is not doing enough to make roads safe and keep them safe for people. We recognise that the measures the Government talks about regarding road safety, such as decreasing speed limits, may be appropriate in some cases. However, there is too much emphasis on decreasing the speed limits. We need to be considering everything else as well. That needs to be brought to bear. I heard the Minister of State's possible reco…

I also raise the issue of road safety. We have had many tragedies on our roads in recent weeks, and particularly last weekend. It seems the Government's main effort is around reducing speed limits, which is something that certainly needs to be looked at. However, as a colleague raised earlier, enforcement is the problem. We have seen road policing numbers cut by one third. When I look at the Estimates the Government published last week and look at programme C, which is for road networks and road safety, I see a 10%…

One of the key problems with this budget that most people have recognised is the predominance of one-off measures being the way of dealing with particular issues, particularly when it comes to energy and all these things. They are all being presented to the public as one-off measures or payments they are going to get in three instalments, which will be very easy to take away in the future. What is being done is not long term in nature and is not sustainable. That is one of the big issues. I see that with transport …

In the two minutes that are left, I will mention VAT on fuel and electricity in respect of Financial Resolution No. 2. While it is welcome that the rate will stay at 9%, both of these commodities, which people need in order to live, are priced far too high at the moment, particularly for people with commercial premises. I was speaking to the owner of a bakery recently where the electricity costs have gone through the roof. The business may close as a result. There needs to be an emphasis, not just in the budget but…

I will leave it to the Minister to respond.

I apologise for my late arrival. There was an accident on the N4 and it delayed things this morning a bit. My question is related to that. It is on the safety measures that are being considered, particularly on the issue of speed controls and so on. I ask the Minister of State if he will make a statement on the matter.

The main issue that many people are looking at in respect of this is the reduction in speed limits on various roads around the country. We certainly need to see that. There is no big opposition to it. However, people are concerned that if the law is not proportionate, it will often not be complied with. We can all recognise this. Many Deputies will know people who were given a speeding fine for being 5 km/h over the speed limit and the camera took a shot of them. Theirs was the only car on a wide open road and they…

I appreciate that. I understand that local authorities will examine each particular stretch of road and find an appropriate speed for it. Many stretches of our secondary roads are not safe to travel on at the standard speed limit of 80 km/h. The speed limit needs to be reduced in those cases. We need to see an appropriate means by which this can be done. Local authorities need to examine each stretch of road and adjust the speed limit accordingly. Another aspect of this on many roads, not just country or byroads, i…

I wish to ask about the funding structure for TII projects and how that funding is drawn down. The Minister will have seen the article this morning in the Irish Independent suggesting that the failure to invest in road projects could lead to up to 77 deaths in five years. It is a stark reminder that when projects are approved to be advanced, we need to advance them with scale and ambition and it needs to happen quickly. The structure we have at the moment is to do things on a phase-by-phase basis. When the Governme…

I am aware of how the system works or in many cases does not work. It certainly does not work efficiently and appropriately. Since the change of government, there has been a change in how the Department of Transport allocates funding. It is very much done on a phase-by-phase basis. Only when one phase of a project is completed can it try to draw down the funding for the next phase. That is causing serious delays, complications and difficulties. I would like to get a clear commitment from the Minister that there wil…