Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

In the past year, my locality experienced two tragedies when pedestrians were killed by trucks on the main streets of Mountrath and Abbeyleix, respectively. One of the victims was a young child while the other was an elderly lady. It should no longer be necessary to drive trucks through small towns. Motorways are needed to bypass these towns and improve safety for their residents as they travel to school, visit post offices or do their shopping. One cannot overstate the contribution motorways make to road safety.

The Estimates and financial package placed before the House for consideration for next year include hundreds of millions of euro allocated directly to the motorway projects. The sting in the tail is the imposition of a toll at a point south of Portlaoise. People may complain about tolls but it is not a big deal to pay a couple of euro in exchange for being able to travel on a safe road.

I will now address the impact of the national development plan on schools. Two new secondary schools are to be built in Portlaoise under public private partnership projects, with two further new schools scheduled for construction in County Offaly. The approved contractor is an Australian company, Macquarie Construction in partnership with the Irish company, Pierse Construction. The Minister, I understand, will be able to formally announce the commencement of construction in the coming weeks. I understand funding is in place and that the project has gone through the rigours of the National Development Finance Agency. Those two secondary schools in Portlaoise will be under construction in 2009, if not beforehand. They will replace the two old schools in the town. Only last year the then Minister for Education and Science opened Portlaoise College, which is part of Laois VEC. It will be one of the few towns where the three secondary schools will have been built within a five-year period. There will be no old school in the town in the next couple of years and we shall have the most modern set of secondary schools in Portlaoise of any town. That is an achievement and the funding is in the financial package in front of us.

In addition, I want to acknowledge that there is a major amount of money there for a project that is particularly close to my heart, the new community school in Mountrath, a mile from where I live. That involves the amalgamation of the Ballyfin secondary school, which is closing next year, the Brigidine convent school in Mountrath and the St. Aonghus vocational school into one new state-of-the-art school, which we hope will be ready for students to move into on 1 September 2009. Construction commenced on that in the second half of this year, there is a very tight timeframe and I look forward to work progressing. Funds are in the Estimates this year to allow that project to be completed and opened next September.

As regards primary schools, only a few weeks ago I introduced to the Minister representatives from Abbeyleix national school, who want to open the first autism unit in County Laois. There is no such facility in the county and children with autism basically have to go Athy or Offaly, where there are excellent schools. I am very pleased, however, that Abbeyleix school has agreed to take on board a new autism unit for County Laois and that, I hope, will get the go ahead. The Minister was extremely sympathetic to the case and I expect a positive result in that regard. In the event, that school will be in construction early in 2009 as well. There is real activity on the ground. These are things that matter to people at local level.

I am appealing to the Minister, if he has funding, to support these projects, also. I expect Borris-in-Ossory, Rathdowney and Killeshin national schools to go to construction next year and planning to be advanced for the new primary schools in Portlaoise. These will not be ready for construction next year, as the design process is just being commenced and they will have to go through planning and tendering. The construction period will follow all that. However, these are among the tremendous projects that will happen in County Laois in 2009 and I am very pleased about that.

Also provided for in the Estimates under the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs — I am very pleased the Minister has confirmed he will be announcing funding — is the new rural development and social inclusion programme. I have not got the exact title the Department uses for that programme, but it will be announced by the Minister in the coming weeks. In County Laois we have had the Laois Leader company and two social inclusion companies, one called Portlaoise Community Action Project in Portlaoise and Mountmellick Development Association's social inclusion programme. Those organisations have agreed, with considerable difficulty and negotiation, to come together to form one county structure for Laois, to deliver social inclusion and rural development programmes. That work is being completed at local level and the Minister has the full funding in his Estimates for the coming year to give the projects the go-ahead. I look forward to all those improvements taking place in terms of social inclusion and rural development under the new programme and again, funding is in place.

Moving to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government I am pleased that funding is available under the water services programme. There is a significant increase in the water services investment programme for 2009, with very good reason. We need to improve the water quality in some of the towns and villages. Some small villages do not have sewerage schemes at all and some of the smaller towns have schemes that were built 60 or 70 years ago which have outgrown the capacity of the sewerage treatment plant. The group town scheme, involving the upgrade of water, sewerage and treatment plants in Abbeyleix, Rathdowney, Durrow, Mountrath, Stradbally and Clonaslee, is in one bundle. We all know the Department likes to bundle groups for a design, build and operate scheme and they are ready and at the tendering stage. I expect that project to get the go-ahead, based on the level of increased funding within the Department for water treatment facilities. Similarly, I want to see the group village sewerage scheme advanced through the design and tender stage, to include places such as Castletown, Ballynakill, the Swan and Timahoe. I expect that to progress in 2009. The construction will not take place in 2009, but will follow in due course when the preparatory work is finished.

Then at local level, there are the smaller schemes. Work has commenced and will be ongoing in 2009 and paid for in the funds provided in the Estimates before us for the Ballycleary group water scheme, to allow 50 houses, all with wells but without water at the edge of Castletown village, to be connected to the public mains; and an extension to Moyad, which is an addition to the Swan water scheme. These projects will all happen, work has commenced but the funding will have to be met out of the 2009 Estimates to allow them to be completed.

In terms of child care, the list goes on. There is an allocation of funding for a new child care facility at Killadooley, halfway between Borris-in-Ossory and Rathdowney and also a new town, near the Laois-Carlow border, and that is proceeding as well. I know the budget for housing is quite tight for the coming year, but work is under way by the voluntary housing agency, Respond!, to complete a housing programme in Mountrath. That will be completed and finalised, including a new community facility for residents, in 2009.

There is a good deal of affordable housing in County Laois that is for sale through the local authority, as well as many houses coming through the Part V process in 2009 for people who require social housing from Laois County Council, and I compliment the council. It is one of the three counties in all of Ireland that has refused to take any funds at any stage under the Part V process. It insisted on taking housing, whether social or affordable, on every housing development constructed in Laois in recent years. We have increased housing stock available for people who need to buy under the affordable scheme or those applying under the social housing scheme. I have met developers who were building houses in County Laois in different counties and they thought we were mad. They said every other county allowed them to make a cash contribution in lieu of social housing, so why not Laois. I encouraged the council to hold firm to its policy, as I still do, because it is the right one, and we have got houses. We have one of the smallest housing lists in Laois of any county strictly because the local authority refused to budge on that principle and insisted on Part V houses all along. In addition, people ask whether we have funding put aside for the rainy day in the future. We have built up a substantial fund of development levies in County Laois for a major programme of works to be carried out by the local authority in the period ahead.

If one looks at the Estimates, one sees there are increases in the key Departments, Education and Science, Social and Family Affairs and Health and Children. The increases may be small but they are there. Some people might feel I have overdone the local issue, but the point is that the same applies to every constituency in every county. If Deputies want to be negative, they will find nothing other than problems. The script of this might make an appropriate newsletter for circulation in my constituency. Before I sit down I shall have to think, in case I have left anywhere out. The point is that this is the financial package the Government put forward on budget day. I have not got time as I am sharing with my colleague, Deputy Dooley, who will start in a couple of minutes, but I could continue to go on about the positive aspects in relation to the financial measures and social welfare increases that were announced. I shall leave others to do that, and in any event, they have been well covered.

We all talk about the HSE and the need to cut out the administrators, reduce paperwork etc. I have just come from the Committee of Public Accounts. Before the committee were the chief executive and financial people from Beaumont Hospital. I asked about the collection rate when people attended the accident and emergency unit there last year, excluding those on medical cards who did not have to pay. The fee was €66 and it has increased in 2009. The collection rate in Beaumont Hospital for those fees is only marginally over 50%. In those hospitals the morning after someone visits an accident and emergency department, an invoice is typed up and sent out at the end of the month. A reminder is then sent and another one a month later. It eventually goes to a solicitor who sends another reminder but rather than face court costs, they just walk away from it.

Coincidentally, the collection rate among those staying overnight in hospitals is up to 80%. Seemingly, there is a better collection rate among those who must take up a hospital bed. We should pass legislation in order that a person gives his or her PPS number when they go to an accident and emergency department. It should be deducted from the person's salary at the end of the month. That would eliminate all the paperwork and bureaucracy. There would be a much higher collection rate.

That is one practical example from this morning's meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts which could help to reduce administration and bureaucracy in the HSE. I have much more to say but have run out of time. I will hand over to my colleague Deputy Timmy Dooley.

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