Yesterday, during Leaders' Questions, I put to the Taoiseach, as I have done before, data obtained from replies to parliamentary questions to demonstrate that the three successive Governments of which he was a part from 2016 to 2020 unfairly distributed public capital spending. Projects in Ministers' constituencies proceed while elsewhere they are stuck in the hell of public procurement. In his response to me yesterday regarding the south east, the Taoiseach name-checked some projects and intimated that I was wrong…

Frank McDonald, writing in The Irish Times , recently outlined the continuing dominance of spending and resource concentration in Dublin and its surrounds, to the detriment of the other regions. The article states: "We are sleepwalking our way towards a deeply dysfunctional, inequitable and unbalanced Ireland." The allocation of capital resources to Waterford is a clear reflection of that image. The endemic failure to resource Waterford as the regional driver for the south east is all too easily illustrated. For ex…

The figures relating to the underfunding of the region are stark. On the hospital, I remind the Taoiseach that despite the increases in revenue to the operating budget that he outlined and the capital grants, it is still the least resourced of all the nine model 4 hospitals in the country. Yet, its emergency department has been the busiest in the country since March. If the Taoiseach looks at the investment that has been given in the 2023 capital development plan, the allocation to Waterford represents less than on…

From the replies to my parliamentary questions, we are right.

In the coming weeks, the budget will be formed and presented to this House. It must be said that no other democratic parliament would accept such a black box of spending. We will see the money going in. There will be more than €12 billion in capital expenditure next year, the bits and bobs that may find our ramshackle hospitals, our unreliable public transport and our patchy and dangerous roads. We see tinpot examinations of public spending but no serious energy is expended on seriously addressing the imbalance in …

It must be a long time since the governance of a public body has been called into question for such a period of time and that so many questions have come to be asked and have yet to be answered. One of the main questions I have is what drove the derogation of trust and the need to conceal the spending of public moneys. Why did RTÉ management deceive the public and the Oireachtas for five years in a row regarding the public salary of one of its best-paid employees? I also want to ask the Minister why the Grant Thorn…

There was another high-profile assault in the capital last week where a visiting actor was bottled, slashed and bitten by three youths, both female and male. One public commentator described them as feral youths running wild on our streets. It is an assault that mirrors so many others occurring across the country every weekend and week. The Garda force now numbers fewer that 14,000, 1,000 short of the Government recruitment campaign. There are only 300 gardaí in Templemore - 25% of the Government's target - and the…

Agriculture has been the backbone of the Irish economy for many decades now and it continues to be the largest economic sector in rural and regional Ireland. Ireland is a world leader in beef and dairy production. If we take 2019 as a reference year, our total agrifood exports were valued at €14.5 billion. Of that impressive number, dairy accounted for €5 billion and beef accounted for €2.3 billion. I thank the Rural Independent Group for tabling this motion because it allows us to focus on the important issues fac…

I only became aware of the amendment this evening and am not as well briefed as my colleagues who are present but I wish to share with the Minister of State some of the correspondence sent to me on the matter. The correspondence states that the new section 26A the Government proposes to insert into the Data Protection Act relates to information shared by citizens that could be deemed to be confidential. In essence, the DPC could impose a gag on some information coming into the public domain. The new section 26A goe…

The Minister of State is treading on slightly dangerous ground tonight and using the Whip on his colleagues is also putting them on dangerous ground. As Deputy Howlin has outlined, there is a process here for bringing this type of legislation into being and it has not been followed in this case. This is a very late amendment to be bringing to the House, throwing in front of people and saying that the Government is happy with it, that the agency wants it and that it has been scrutinised sufficiently to go ahead. I d…

My question relates to the Department's position on developing a Ballina-style railhead in Kildare to provide further connectivity into the Port of Waterford to take pressure off Dublin Port and the capital and give us a more sustainable and balanced regional transport network.

I hear a lot of discussion about the congestion in Dublin and capacity issues in Dublin Port. Last year the Port of Waterford saw €1.7 billion worth of goods imported and exported. There was a turnover of almost €400 million in the adjacent enterprise support area. Over 650 people are employed in that area. There is massive potential for expansion, not alone in respect of freight but particularly in support of offshore wind. What is the Government's policy on rebalancing our distribution and transport networks? Wat…

I look forward to seeing both of those reviews which are going to be very important in signalling whether the Government and Departments have taken an active and positive look at how we could redistribute some of the activity that is going on. Dublin is creaking at the seams, there is no doubt, not alone Dublin Port. There is a massive opportunity for housing and office development on the port lands, as has been mentioned many times. There does not seem to be a will in terms of policy to really look at the outside …

The Minister of State touched on it earlier, but could he provide a timeframe for the yet-to-be-published national rail strategy?

Hopefully, we will get to see something within this rail strategy that points to better and more focused national and regional development right across the country, including in the midlands and the north west. As I stated earlier, we need to rebalance the distribution of infrastructure in this State. I already mentioned to the Minister of State, and he agreed, about the importance of Dublin Port. I point out to him that Dublin Port has more than 80% of all container traffic coming into the country. A lot of that c…

I hope that when this strategy comes out, it will have a long-term focus and be the basis of planning for the next 25 or 30 years, not something looking at five or ten years because rail infrastructure development is a long-term goal. The Minister of State highlighted regional rebalancing and the interconnection of our cities. In our own area in the south east, I would like to see the Waterford to Wexford line reopened and I would also like to see improvements for the Waterford to Limerick Junction line and beyond …

On the underspend, how much of the cost is contracted and how much of it is in terms of profile? Is some of the difficulty here related to contracted price, in terms of evaluated prices moving on? BusConnects expenditure was mentioned earlier. There is ongoing discussion in Waterford about BusConnects. There is a proposal to completely change the route of a Waterford to Tramore bus route to turn it back on itself and change the direction of flow, which will require a complete new investment in bus infrastructure. I…

Reviewing spends on projects such as the Mater hospital, the Dunkettle roundabout, the Cork and Dublin runways, the national children's hospital, it is clear how important it is to have a Minister to shepherd a project through our cumbersome public spending code. It appears to me that many fine and needed projects that lack ministerial political patronage are left strangled by toxic departmental processes. Fast-track projects suggest Ministers have a VIP lane through the spending code while others are left sitting …

I welcome the presence of the two Ministers of State at the Department of Health here this morning to debate this motion. I thank Deputy Grealish for proposing the motion, which is very important. I also thank Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh in our office. The Ministers of State will be well aware that, in the Programme for Government: Our Shared Future, there is a plan to introduce a statutory scheme to support people to live in their own homes by providing them with access to high-quality and regulated home care. Unfortunatel…

I am happy to support these statements on the youth justice strategy. There is an old saying that as the tree is bent so it grows. It is very apt. We know the difficulties of growing up in disadvantage and the effects it has on childhood development. The genesis of much of what the strategy speaks to can be found in the early childhood years. Early childhood may not come into contact with the justice system but the strategy needs to find a more comprehensive way to try to target children at the earliest possible ag…