Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome what we have seen on this occasion in the budgetary exercise as a shift in Government thinking. In the budget the split in spend will be 3:1. Under the previous Administration which comprised Fine Gael and the Labour Party and lasted for five years, the split in the years in which there was additional funding available was 1:1 or 50:50. It is worth reminding everybody that those budgets were categorised by independent commentators as regressive. Fianna Fáil has rightly used its mandate to bring about a change in budgetary direction. This is a Fine Gael budget which has been influenced positively by Fianna Fáil. We will stand on our record in that regard and will stand up for the in excess of 500,000 people who gave us their number one vote in the last general election.

There are a couple of specific issues about which I would like to speak. On the housing initiative, I hope I am wrong, but I believe it is doomed to fail because it will not in any substantive way address the supply side issues. The provision of a €20,000 tax refund will not help a significant enough cohort of people. The serviced land initiative announced by the Government a few weeks ago, for which €200 million is being provided, will not bring any significant amount of serviced land into play in the immediate term.

The former Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government failed in its responsibility to deliver the many wastewater treatment system upgrades required throughout the country. This issue has been ongoing for years. For example, an upgrade of the system in the town of Askeaton in my constituency has been promised since 2002, yet it is not listed as a priority investment in Irish Water's 2017 to 2021 initiative.

I welcome the re-initiation of the National Treatment Purchase Fund. This is important in the context of the need to reduce hospital waiting lists such that people will know that there is light at the end of the tunnel in their receiving treatment. I agree with the comments of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, on the additional nurses promised in the context of the budget. It is important that the additional front-line nursing posts will not be posts vacated by agency nurses but will increase nursing capacity within the hospital system.

On the increase in Garda numbers, more gardaí are needed in rural communities and the capital city. I remind the Government that Fianna Fáil committed in its election manifesto to increasing Garda strength to 14,500 only to be told at the time by the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, that this would not be possible. Fine Gael then published its election manifesto in which it committed to increasing Garda strength to 15,000. It appears that it was not possible to reach Fianna Fáil's target, but it was possible to achieve a higher target. I welcome the proposed increase in Garda numbers, but it must be remembered that Fine Gael in government suspended Garda recruitment for too many years. We are still playing catch-up in that regard.

On the capital budget, as a Deputy who comes from Limerick, the third largest city in the country, I am disappointed that the proposed M20 motorway project from Limerick to Cork is not mentioned in the Government's priority capital programme. That is inexcusable. The Government needs to revisit the omission from the capital programme of the development of the M20 which would link the mid-west with Rosslare and Cork.

There was no mention yesterday in the contributions of the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform of proper balanced regional development. I acknowledge the introduction of the regional jobs action plans, the analysis of which on a county by county basis points to a serious discrepancy in many rural communities. There is still a two-speed recovery and the Government is not dealing with the matter.

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