Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the delegates, from Cavan, Connemara and Meath, and thank them for their very well-presented case on the obstacles we are encountering in building roads and trying to survive in our communities. We have many of the same issues in Kerry and are still dealing with them. I will highlight two. One is the Macroom bypass, which is vital to the county and to attract investment to it. As I have already highlighted in the Dáil, it has been denied to us because some environmentalists decided we would affect a snail by building the road. To hurt us further, they called it a Kerry snail. The same scenario was evident, to a lesser degree, in west Kerry, where they tried to prevent us from building the N86 or from providing the people of the area with a proper, safe road. Many people are still being hurt and maimed. Sadly, people were killed in the area in the past. We are encountering those problems also.

The people in rural Ireland, including Kerry, the west coast and midlands, are entitled to live as well as the people of the east coast, including Dublin. When we turn on the 8 o'clock news every morning, we hear 200, 300 or 500 jobs have been secured for Dublin but no job for Kerry. We cannot get a job to Kerry because we cannot attract investors owing to there being no access to the county. Kerry Group has a brand-new facility and it hurts me every time I pass it on the way up to or down from Dublin. It is at the side of the motorway in the heartland of Kildare. I do not begrudge the people of Kildare or Dublin. Maybe there is a bit of "agro" around the third Sunday in September if we are lucky enough to meet in Dublin for the all-Ireland final. We were not in it this year. We did not do well enough in the semi-final, in which we met Dublin.