Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I remember when there was talk of Galway city and county coming together and, at first, I thought it might be a good thing. Then I went trawling through the different ups and downs, the changing of borders in different areas and so forth, and I changed my mind. County councils in most counties are struggling for money. They are starved of funds and every time we give another bit to the golden goose, that is, the city, the county council suffers more. Unfortunately, that is the reality. I speak as someone who comes from the periphery of a county, an area that straddles two county borders.

Sadly, the councils in the cities tend to forget that people in these areas even exist. I understand that cities will expand, and there is no point saying that they will not. There is no reason, however, that city and county councils cannot work together on planning matters, which are obviously the most important thing here. There can be joined-up thinking on this while allowing each side its own identity.

On the subject of cities expanding, Galway city needs a ring road. There have been objections, the whole thing has been brought to the European Court and the city has been stalled. Every city needs to look at the amount of land within the city itself which is idle and not being built on. I see this in Galway, for example, out at the back of the train station and in around the docks. There are several places, and Deputy Grealish will be familiar with them, that have not been built upon even as people talk about having to go further outside the city limits. Economically speaking, the first thing that needs to be done is to use the land nearest the city centre and then work out. When it can be shown that every single perch of ground has been used, then different ideas can be considered. Not one city in this country, including the one we are in now, has done this. They have all gone sprawling out and new suburbs were built, but the reality is that hundreds of acres have been left idle in most of our cities with nothing happening on them. It is a sad thing.

Revenue is also a huge worry. Like every other Deputy, I often talk to those in the county councils about roads and so forth and I saw recently that Galway County Council passed a motion that Oranmore would get 25% of the funding. This money will probably never come, but whether it will or will not, Oranmore is being given priority. It seems to be that is okay to have good roads in and around the city, but that out the country, a person can get a puncture or get buried in a pothole and what about it. This is not the way it should be. People from all different parts of the country should have proper access to proper roads. This include ring roads for every city, which I am fully in favour of, proper infrastructure and proper public transport. This should all be catered for rather than jumping the gun, having everybody driving in all directions and not tightening up the city. We found out one thing and we should learn from our past experiences. When we decided to let some of the lovely fancy shops that came into this country establish themselves outside of towns, we saw the drastic effect it had on the SMEs, the small shops and businesses, in the middle of towns. That is the first thing we should learn from.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that while we are good at giving out about things, yesterday, in fairness, council workers were out working hard in every county in Ireland. I might question why they were not let out earlier, of course, but that was a health and safety matter. Whatever people's opinions might be on the water services, their staff did the same. What the ESB achieved in dealing with yesterday's problems, which arose through the fault of nobody, is a credit to its staff. We need to recognise the work of the front-line service staff who went out yesterday and are still out today in the aftermath of the storm.

Politicians are jumping the gun on this and coming out with report after report about the things we are going to do. We are going to amalgamate city and county councils, we are going to move the boundaries out, or we are going to do x, y and z. Let us look at Dublin, which has powered ahead of the rest of the cities in this country. The first thing we have to do is put infrastructure in place. I welcome the €20 million that has been promised to the Cork to Mallow road. It is needed because, as another Deputy pointed out earlier, it will also join up Limerick and Galway, and this is a good thing. There are other parts of the country, however, on which there is no loudspeaker. The west is one such example. Castlebar needs a road to Mullingar as there is no point bringing people up through every small town in the countryside. Galway needs its outer ring road, the N59. These are not in our areas. This is not parish pump stuff. We need a new road from where the motorway finishes up to Knock airport and then on to Donegal. We need this now more than ever before because anyone heading out of Tuam at the moment will hit the motorway if they need to take a plane and this, I believe, will cause Knock airport to suffer. We need to bring, not lopsided development, but balanced regional developments to every part of this country. There is no point in being delusional about this. It will certainly cost money. If we are cute enough, however, we could borrow upfront. Building a new road is an investment for 100 years and not for five or ten or 20 years like a mortgage. This is what should be done.

I welcome the motion and I will support it.

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