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

I want to take this opportunity, because I did not have one already, to congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, and wish him nothing but good luck in his role in the Government. I sincerely congratulate him.

This is a very important time, as I said in an earlier debate, because the decisions taken and the legislation being passed by the Dáil in the coming days and weeks before the end of July is very important. Every bit of funding that can be got for the July stimulus must be used wisely, which is the main point. I am very upset this evening because I believe the Government has shot itself in the foot by delaying for another 25 days the opening of our public houses. People might say this is straying from the debate but it is not because what we are speaking about in this debate and other debates is how to get the wheels of our economy going, whether through borrowing money from Europe or getting people in Ireland to spend money again. If the doors of our public houses were to open next Monday, it would put money back into circulation. I truthfully believe the decision to delay this for a further 25 days will endanger people's health because it will concentrate where we send people to spend money; in other words, only to places that serve food. It will also stop the wheels of commerce from rolling again. All these people had taken in stock in recent days. People were rostered to work from next Monday. All of this has now been stopped. I see this as a negative financial impact on our country and I do not see it saving one life or one person from getting ill. It is ill-founded and wrong.

To return to the debate and where we are going with regard to securing funding and all that involves, if we look at the lessons we learned from an economic point of view, and the economic cycles we go through in life, and if we look at the previous downturn in the economy and the previous burn-out we had when we had nothing but austerity, now we have an opportunity to deal with the problem in a different way because we can access money at an affordable rate and we should be doing so. We should plough on with building more roads and putting in place more infrastructure.

There is so much we can do in this country. We have a workforce. People have returned from America, England and Australia. They are here and ready and able to work. All we must do is get them back to work. We can do that by getting money rolling into the economy and getting major infrastructure projects, many of which are shovel ready, started.

There was much talk earlier about sewerage schemes. I appreciate the Minister of State's interest in this. He has always been a promoter of sewerage schemes in small villages and towns to facilitate orderly growth. The late Jackie Healy-Rae went to a place called Fieries in Kerry and demanded that a sewerage scheme be established there. At the time there was nobody there to be connected to that sewerage scheme, but today there are hundreds of young families living there simply because the infrastructure was put in place. Caherdaniel is crying out for a sewerage scheme. There are many other such villages. They have rightly been prioritised by members of Kerry County Council, not just now but over the years. These must be delivered. People are being told not to live in the countryside yet, at the same time, if they want to live in small towns or villages they cannot do so. For example, no more planning permission is being granted in Kenmare. We are told that until there is a proper upgraded sewerage scheme we will not be allowed to build any more developments there. It is crazy.

I thank the Chairman for giving me this brief opportunity to speak.

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