Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Today we hear travel agents and airlines advertising that Spain will be opening up on 1 July. In that same vein, I call on the Taoiseach to open hotels and pubs on the same day as restaurants and cafés on 29 June and to give the tourism industry in Kerry in places such as Killarney, Dingle, Cahersiveen and right around the Ring of Kerry the chance to avail of a few weeks of tourism. We all hope the schools will go back in the last week of August so we are only talking about six to seven weeks of a window. If we do not open the hotels and pubs until 10 August the season will be over and it will be gone for this year. Many places will just not open under those circumstances. We need businesses and pubs to operate in order to create jobs and incomes. To do this, we need to adjust the 2 m limit to 1 m. The WHO, which we gave an awful lot of money to, more than €9 million, suggests that 1 m will do.

The programme for Government should be about getting our economy back up and running. It seems to me that for the last number of months until this week, it has been about the climate and climate change. The fact is that our emissions are only 0.13% in the worldwide context.

Most businesses and SMEs will need grants to get themselves up and running and they will need a cash injection, as they did in Germany. Bus and coach tours need guidance about seating. Yesterday, we heard from a tour operator that it is trying to sell tours for 2021 but it is not clear how many people will be allowed to sit on a 50-seater, a 30-seater or a 16-seater bus. It is not fair on these companies that they are getting no guidance. Someone somewhere should somehow be able to tell them and guide them as to what will be acceptable.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil should not block the proposed liquified natural gas, LNG, import terminal in Shannon and not cave in to the Green Party. This project does not need any money from the Government, it would create many jobs and we need a second gas source.

The Government still has not addressed the need for Covid payments for seasonal workers or people over the age of 66, who really need whatever they were on to be brought up to the value of the Covid payment. They were not looking for the payment on top of what they were getting but rather the €350 just to bring them up to €350.

Farmers are not getting much encouragement or assistance. The Taoiseach advised us to cut down on eating meat. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, says that we cannot stay farming like our fathers did, even though everyone on my side of the country recognises that the Minister's father, Donal Creed, God be good to him, was a fierce farmer and landed up here one morning after milking his cows and the place was still not open. The Greens just want to sow seeds in south-facing window boxes. They say we should not cut turf. Some other geniuses are saying we must block drains and make land useless after all the hard work on it, some of which was grant-aided. The Greens, we now hear, want no more planning in rural areas, only towns. They want to build lay-bys and no more roads. We had plenty of lay-bys in Kerry and they were grand for lorry drivers to pull into in order to have their rest breaks, but they were closed and blocked because it was felt Travellers would camp there.

I was very disappointed when Deputy Micheál Martin stated on "The Late Late Show" that farmers would have to diversify and plant forestry. Planting forestry does not provide an acceptable income for many farmers. Around east Cork and north Kerry, we have great land. We are not allowed plant marginal land. It is not grant-aided. We have to plant good land. Planting forestry while the rainforests in South America are cut down and beef is brought into Europe is not an option for Irish farmers, and it is not acceptable to come out with such a statement. I am really disappointed in the leader of Fianna Fáil and the Taoiseach and his entire Government for the non-assistance they have given farmers over the past four and half years.

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