Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

There is no secrecy about these issues. The Deputies by and large have published and spoken about them. The House votes on public expenditure under the departmental Votes whenever anything is done about these issues. The Deputies have raised national issues that are in the programme for Government such as the number of beds to be opened, the number of acute beds and other hospital issues, education issues, disability and autism issues, all of which are in the public interest and to which probably every Deputy subscribes. There is nothing exceptional about that other than that the Deputies want to see progress on these issues nationally, with a knock-on effect in their own constituencies. None of these understandings is horrendously long. They specify local issues such as communities and roads. There is no great secret about them. Some of the Deputies mentioned these roads, which are already in local authority plans, which they want to see progressed in the next few years. None of these issues is outside this. I meant to say there is a total of €180 billion in the national development plan to cover these issues in future years.

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