Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I concur with what Deputy Eoghan Murphy said with regard to Covid and the necessity to discuss it. We do live in a parliamentary democracy and we do have to have debate. I appreciate that people do not like to be held accountable and that people sometimes think that undermines a message, but nothing undermines a message as much as lack of debate because people cotton onto that very quickly. That is what we have had in this House. Even in the context of rural development we need to discuss Covid. We cannot pretend that Covid poses the same risk in rural communities as it does in Dublin, just as we cannot pretend that it poses the same risk in Dublin as it does in greater London. Any pandemic, particularly a respiratory virus, is clearly going to pose a greater risk in areas where there is a greater density of population.

Covid and people working from home poses a huge opportunity for a change of mindset. There are many towns and villages that were once thriving commercial centres that are now dying. We can blame successive Governments, globalisation or whatever we like for this, but I think we need to move away from that to see what people want. There are a number of office blocks around here that are now empty as people are working from home. People are better equipped now to work from home once broadband is provided. I hope that the broadband plan will be rolled out as scheduled.

There are three particular villages in Clare that I want to mention that have been already mentioned by previous speakers, namely, Broadford, Carrigaholt and Doolin. These are very different villages but the one thing they have in common is they do not have a sewerage scheme. For this reason, Irish Water is not interested in dealing with them. Irish Water is upgrading existing sewerage schemes but it is not taking on new schemes. Broadford is ten miles from Limerick, so it is in a perfect position to grow. Carrigaholt is working to grow its tourism industry and Doolin has a very advanced tourism industry, but none of these areas have sewerage schemes. There needs to be a system put in place so that they can grow and have a sewerage scheme.

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