Dinny McGinley (Donegal South West, Fine Gael)

Tá áthas orm sa deireadh thiar thall, i ndiaidh tréimhse fada, go mbeidh deis ag na toghthóirí i nDún na nGall Thiar-Theas breithiúnas a thabhairt ar an Rialtas agus Teachta a chur chuig an Dáil le hionadaíocht a dhéanamh dóibh. Donegal South-West has been left for 18 months without proper, full constitutional representation. I welcome the decision at long last, which has been forced on the Government, to hold the by-election in three weeks' time. We have been preparing for a long time for this by-election. Our candidate, Barry O'Neill, is a young, articulate and energetic councillor. He was selected almost a year ago. I am sure that the people of Donegal South-West will have an opportunity of voting for a good man who will represent them in this House for the duration of this Government's lifetime, which will not be for too long. It will also give the Tánaiste's colleagues an opportunity to visit Donegal to witness for themselves the devastation that has been visited on the county, both in the South-West and North-East constituencies, by this Government and its predecessor.

Some 22,000 people are unemployed in County Donegal, including in Ballyshannon where they have regular meetings about unemployment, and the Tánaiste's own town of Donegal where 600 or 700 jobs were lost in Hospira. Killybegs is a ghost town, as is the edge of the Finn Valley and down to my own area in the Gaeltacht. The Tánaiste described the Gweedore industrial estate but it is not the same one that I know. It is just a pale shadow of what it was. We used to have 1,500 people there but there are fewer than 1,000 now.

The forthcoming by-election will be an opportunity for the Tánaiste's colleagues to see how we have been overlooked. We need broadband and infrastructural development.

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