Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I thank the Taoiseach for that. There are however three areas on which we do not seem to have any national perspective — waste, energy and communications. Regarding waste, some landfills have been closed while others are opening up. Some can take waste only from specific areas while others are wide open, yet the Government is dealing with Dublin's waste problem by sending 200,000 tonnes of waste north every year, some of it being buried in south Armagh and some in other places. We do not seem to have a national perspective in this area. Local authorities feel the Government intends to foist incinerators on every area, despite page 15 of the programme for Government stating that "the mass incineration of unsegregated waste with no energy recovery is not an acceptable practice today".

Regarding energy, we are reliant on gas. We listened this morning to a member of the energy community talking about wind farming and the fact that there is no longer any incentive to provide that here as part of an alternative. There is no concept of where we should be in 20 years.

On communications, I have said before that we cannot wait around until the machines dig up every lane and bóithrín to install broadband. We need it fast and must move to wireless and satellite and get on with it so that one gives Bloody Foreland the same opportunities as central Dublin. If we do not do that in a national or regional sense, our population of 5 million by 2020 will all be focused on the semicircle of the greater Dublin region. That will create problems over the next 50 or 100 years if the Government does not take a long-term perspective now.

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