Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will try and not take the full 20 minutes. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said earlier this funding is very welcome and wanted but it must be given in a responsible way. I have no confidence in giving funding to Irish Water as it has wasted what money we have had in the country to date. It put in meters throughout the country and used all of its funding but was able to keep back €500,000 to top up wages when the money was running out last year.

This funding has to go into rebuilding Ireland. The Minister of State can see in his own constituency that for the past 30 years Askeaton has been promised a sewerage system. Every Government has promised it a sewerage system and no one has delivered. This time there will be a task force. I welcome this and I will look forward to it but will it happen? Oola is the same, as is Fedamore. Five towns on boil notices are waiting for €1 million for five bore wells for water. Irish Water is looking for €4 million for a pipe from the Shannon Estuary to Croom. It cannot pump the water from the Shannon Estuary because raw sewage is going into the estuary from Askeaton. I do not want to waste money unless we fix the infrastructure and I have no confidence whatsoever in Irish Water.

I am very concerned about the tourism sector, which generated €9 billion in revenue last year. Since the recession, it has created 90,000 new jobs. Earlier, we spoke about Apple, which has 6,000 jobs in Ireland. Prior to Covid, 270,000 people were employed in tourism and now those jobs are at risk without support. There are practical steps that could make a major difference to the survival of industry. One of these is a continuation of the wage subsidy scheme, which is due to finish on 10 August, until April 2021. The tourism sector is very labour intensive and more than 40% of the turnover goes on wages.

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