Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the announcement of funding to complete the Dunkettle interchange. This is much needed but it is disappointing that there is still no real commitment to Cork's northern ring road.

Overall, this has not been a good budget for Cork. In the face of Brexit and Covid-19, with a Cork Taoiseach and a Cork Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, this was a serious opportunity to deliver Cork as a counterbalance to Dublin, which is policy. Also, the legislation on increasing the carbon tax every year for the next ten years was sneaky and underhanded. Some people will not be able to pay this tax and there are no protections for those people.

It will leave some people going cold this winter and every winter for the next ten years. That is just not fair. There were other ways to do it but the Government decided to pick ordinary people to suffer the burden as usual.

People might laugh when I say this, but I think Cork is the greatest place in the world. However, it cannot reach its full potential unless it gets support from the Government. We need the new hospital that was promised for the past 20 years, the northern ring road and real housing developments in Cork, as well as investment in our young people. We have a Corkman as Taoiseach, captaining the country, but unfortunately he dropped the ball for Cork in this budget.

At a first glance it seemed as though the budget would make the difference in investing in and supporting people in addiction services but it has transpired in the past 24 hours that not even the Minister knows what the actual investment is. He has not provided a clear breakdown. A sum of €10 million was committed to the national drugs strategy yesterday but is that entirely for the strategy or is it additional funds? This is a simple question that the Minister has not answered. He has confused a strategy with the task forces, and he put out a tweet yesterday about €10 million in funding for the task forces. That was incorrect because yesterday's budget provided €1 million. We are looking for funding for the task forces because it is badly needed. As far as I am aware, that €1 million had been committed by previous Ministers as part of the three-year strategic health initiatives. The €11 million for Covid-19 measures among the homeless is part of the HSE winter plan, not part of the budget.

This evening The Examiner reported that 13 hospitals, including University Hospital Cork and Mercy University Hospital, had no ICU beds available yesterday. There has been a lot of talk about health in this budget. Our spokesperson, Deputy Cullinane has highlighted the matter and this is something we are still looking for.

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