Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am acting responsibly. I am making the point that I have stood up at public meetings with others and told people which way I was leaning on this Bill and so have others from other parties, yet now they are doing the exact opposite. That is all I am saying - "To thine own self be true". That is all I can do. I respect that but as I said, a plethora of legislation is being rolled out without any impact assessment of the damage it is doing to rural Ireland.

I attended the formation talks for Government for nigh on 30 days with colleagues. One of the biggest issues we had was that legislation that would be passed here would be rural-proofed. Rural-proofing is anything outside the Pale. Lest people think I am anti-Dublin, I am not. I am just saying some bit of balance must be brought into the equation. We have all kinds of public services here. We even have the new Luas that the Minister and his team have designed but it cannot cross O'Connell Bridge. Dublin has more public transport than can fit in the city. Send a small bit down to us and we will make plenty of room for buses and trains. Let us have some constitutional fairness in the legislation we pass here. Under the Constitution, we are supposed to treat all people equally but it looks very much like some of us are less equal than others. This legislation and other legislation passed by other Ministers, including the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, is very regressive and anti-rural Ireland. I will have time to speak on the amendments. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for his forbearance.

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