Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for the opportunity to speak. This is a good exercise on behalf of the Government. The Opposition has been vocal in asking where the cuts will be and how many dispossessed and disadvantaged people the Government will discommode. Each Minister and Minister of State has laid out exactly where the savings will be made within each Department. That is a good exercise. When we open our newspapers, we can see where the savings are being made under each heading. This informs the House and the electorate at large on the strategy. I thank the Whips for arranging these statements in which we have set out our stall. No one can say he or she did not know. Each Minister and Minister of State has been told to come in and tell it as it is and that is the way it should be done.

Listening to Opposition Deputies today and yesterday, one would think that this downturn occurred only in Ireland, as if a big, bold witch came along and decided to single out Ireland as the place where there would be an economic downturn. Of course, it is not so. This is a global downturn, not one visited exactly on this country. I am sure many of us look at BBC or Sky News at night and see the travails of what is taking place in Britain. Seeing Gordon Brown and what is going on there, we know well that if it just afflicted us, it went quickly across the water and to many other countries of which we read.

I am amazed at the strident contributions suggesting that Fianna Fáil threw it all away for the past ten years as if we put all the taxes in big black bags and dumped them in incinerators, if one is allowed to do so. That is not so. I look at schools with extra teachers and special needs assistants, SNAs. Up to eight years ago, there was no such thing as SNAs, as the Acting Chairman will know from his education times. An SNA might as well have been a foreign body. Certainly up to eight years ago, and perhaps up to a decade ago, there was not such a person in the classrooms of Ireland. There is now and they have made a marvellous difference. Everyone wants the best for people with disabilities. There are halos not just on the Opposition side, everyone wants good for people with disabilities.

I see children who are happy with the SNA, happy going to school, knowing that their special, private, personal needs are being looked after by a well motivated person. There are training outlets open to these people, where they can be trained so that they are better professionals. That is a wonderful initiative so money spent there has not been wasted. It is money that will have a major input into the person's upbringing.

With regard to roads, next Wednesday, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Dempsey, will come to the Moate intersection and he will open the last leg of the Dublin to Athlone motorway. I will go out of my house, get into the car and 50 yards from where I live I will come to the motorway. Of course, one comes to a dead end at the M50 and this is where the difficulty lies. Massive work is being done there too.

This road is ahead of target. It is within its budget and is ahead of time. Was this wasted money? Ask anyone who travels between Athlone and Dublin. Did people think it was not a good job? Of course it is a good job, it is well merited and it is great that we have it. I hope the Athlone to Galway leg of that motorway will be completed as swiftly.

We see all the benefits which accrued in education. With regard to health, I frequently stand up and rightly give out about the vagaries of the HSE because it does not know whether it is coming or going, to whom it should report and what it should report on. That is its largest difficulty. However, my elderly neighbour tells me he visits Portiuncula Hospital on a monthly basis and Galway Regional Hospital on a three-monthly basis for various tests which he must undergo and he is treated with the utmost courtesy. He is rarely left waiting. He has a medical card and finds he gets great service.

I try to catch myself picking out the bad and tell myself to ease on because it is not all that way. Major advantages have accrued through the health service for people up and down this land. However, people do not usually talk about them because they are so happy to have gone in and out of hospital, escaped it all and be back in good health. I can also see the roads and what has been done for children with disabilities.

I wish to make a plea for funding for schools and the construction of physical buildings for schools. Yesterday, we had three deputations, one from Longford and two from Westmeath, one from a primary and two from post-primary schools. They sorely need new schools. They had reached the point of going to tender and they were told to stop. Money borrowed for infrastructural work such as schools would be money well borrowed and spent. If the school is sound, the children will be happier to attend and a better type of education will be provided.

If I were to have a plea it would be that the spending on school construction should continue in the Estimates round-up which will gather pace during the summer and the early autumn. Let this spending continue because it will be money well spent and it will lift the industry. Let no one be under any illusion that this is a soft way to go into a downturn. The Taoiseach has been emphatic in stating that if further cutbacks are needed they will be made and if there is a need for scrutiny and rescrutinising of all Government heads and subheads in the Estimates, that will be done. However, I would exempt capital spending of a beneficial nature to those living in the country.

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