Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think the scheme is totally different in different parts of the country. We do not have any lanes in Connemara. They are all bóithrín. They are actually roads and they are not primarily for agriculture. Many of them are going to the bog. However, they are roads that were always there. Take south Connemara where you had the main road and then the road off that going to the sea. People built along that road to the sea or up to the bog through the land, so there are houses on most of these roads but they were always there as roads. They are not something that people created just to build a house. The problems was that a lot of these roads were done 20 or 30 years ago but the weather and traffic causes damage and they need to be done again. Unfortunately Galway County Council did not take over the roads. Is there any way of carrying out a national assessment of what the demand is?

I have a bit of a hang up on this because I believe that every house in this country, up to the front gate but not beyond unless there is exceptional humanitarian reasons, should have water and broadband. The Government is getting there on broadband - full marks to it - but there is still a major problem with water with 10% of houses depending on private sources of water which are very variable and very rarely checked. Every house should have electricity, which is effectively done. The last thing is a decent road, in this very wet climate, to every house in the country. I do not think it is an awful lot to ask because rural people do not benefit from all the other infrastructure like footpaths, street lights, wastewater systems and so on that cost a fortune for the State not only to build but also to maintain. Is there any way that an inventory could be drawn up of the number of houses that do not have a tarred road to them, so we could assess this problem? I think those five basics are basics for every house.