Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)

When we seek funding to upgrade those schemes, we are told local authorities do not have the money to fund the upgrades. If it is all right for a local authority to argue that it cannot upgrade a sewage treatment plant in a town or village, or if it can continue to pollute in such a fashion, how can the Minister tell a householder that his or her system must be upgraded? That person may not have the money to upgrade and people in rural Ireland are today struggling with unemployment and children at home who have not found work. People are in a desperate position and they may never have believed they would find themselves there, as we got away through the 1950s and 1960s, and we survived the 1980s. People are now in a financial position that they never saw coming. In its infinite wisdom, our Government thinks it is all right to impose this new regulation at a time when people can least afford it.

As we are discussing rural Ireland, we should understand that no person respects the countryside more than the people who live in it.

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