Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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We will return to County Limerick. I understand there is much work going on in Limerick city. Many houses are being built and I welcome that. However, I represent the county of Limerick. The Minister was in Limerick recently and we visited a couple of sites where he announced houses in different areas. We went to a hospital and showed that in hospital there were five existing new houses connected to an on-site sewer.

I will start with Askeaton. Some 38 years ago, one of the Minister’s own councillors asked to upgrade the scheme. He is now retiring; he is not running again. Yet, it still is not done. This is the update now from Uisce Éireann, from the Government, that it is hoping to look at an investment period of between 2025 and 2029. It was raised 38 years ago, and now it is going to be between 2025 and 2029 for this.

I have been on to the Minister about Oola and the infrastructure there. I am delighted that Uisce Éireann is looking at the infrastructure in Oola and by the end of 2024 it will have upgraded the system there. It will allow for a small bit of capacity – not a lot. I also welcome that, but this is 2024.

None of the projects the Minister named here are starting now. I cannot go to any developer in any of these areas at the moment on a promise and meet the timelines of the funding that the he gave, which I welcome to the areas that can do it, but to the areas that cannot, it is not worth the paper it is written on to us. No council, developer or landowner can actually do this in the timeline the Minister gave. I have Kilfinnane – 2025 to 2026 - which is outside the Minister’s remit again. All of these are all dated 2024, 2025 and up to 2030.

He said this is a housing for all programme. The LDA is city-based. It is not for rural areas or the towns and village - the 2030 ones in Limerick are. If we had infrastructure, they could actually produce. However, none of the infrastructure is there at the moment. All of the funding there is worthless to us. We cannot build because of the infrastructure.

We can build housing in Kilmallock and some in Croom. They are just after doing a survey recently in Croom. When they put in the new road, I asked them whether the capacity of the existing sewer system was big enough to take the expansion of Croom. They told me it was. I begged to differ when them and said it is not. Now they are coming back after they have got funding to say that they must do another survey on the sewer system in Croom. They say it can only take 300-odd people in the system. We have 46 houses in one development and 26 in another. We have a nursing home that is waiting to be built, 20 elderly-living houses, an extension of the hospital and a new school that was connected. Again, now they are coming back to say they will now make these developer-led and ask the developers to pay them to do a survey on a system they already said was adequate for the expansion of Croom.

With regard to the water supply for these new houses in Croom which I said I could deliver if the infrastructure was there, we have been advised here at the committee, on the record, that it would be started within three months. That was a year and a half ago. Now they have come back to say it will be started in the third quarter of the current year, 2023, and it will be completed some time in 2024. Again, give me the infrastructure and I will build for you. I will give all the prayers in the world and thank you for it but I will not give thanks for empty promises that are not being delivered on. I have gone back 38 years to a councillor who is now retiring. Now I am coming forward to dates going from 2024 to 2030, which we were promised would be invested in. This is housing for all. We can deliver it.

I recognise the system put up today for funding against the fees, and I appreciate that it will help somewhat. However, if I want to provide a large number of houses for the protection not only of the people who want to live there but the infrastructure will provide for businesses that will become sustainable. If I go to a bank tomorrow looking for a loan to improve my business in a locality, in any town or village in Ireland, the first thing I will be asked for is a five-year projection. I will be asked how many more people are coming in. I will say none, because the Government has not yet given us the funding to upgrade the sewerage system so we are four or five years away. The Government is killing rural Ireland by not investing in it.

We have a meeting in Kilbeheny on Friday night. Its sewerage system is caught between counties Cork and Limerick. Raw sewage is going straight into the waterworks. It is not included in Uisce Éireann’s list. Will the Minister give me a list of names of all those I have asked for, and when will he give the investment to local authorities in order that they can get the work done outside of Uisce Éireann? Uisce Éireann is not capable of doing the work. I want to know when the Minister will deliver for rural Ireland.