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

I will begin with cross-Border initiatives. When I was elected to Dáil Éireann I was lucky enough to get involved in a group, along with Deputy Michael Collins, that helped me to transport people from Limerick to Belfast for cataract surgery. Today I heard the Taoiseach saying that he does not know if this will continue after Brexit. He could not give us a definite answer on that. I asked earlier this week about the management of our hospitals. If the proper structures were in place, we would not have to bring people to Northern Ireland for operations. There is no structure there. I have raised the issue of an audit of hospital management in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, which has the highest number of patients on trolleys. It is not the care provided in the hospital that is the problem, it is the management. There is no structure. We have all of the investment and top of the range equipment required but the management is wrong and needs to be fixed. The HSE made a statement about nurses being bullied who then left their jobs. This is an issue with management and structure.

The next issue I wish to raise is renewable energy which is being pushed down our throats. We are hearing nothing but electric cars here and electric cars there. How can we have electric vehicles in this country when we have no charging infrastructure? We do not have the infrastructure to build houses, including sewage systems and we have no charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in rural Ireland. All that the Government has done is raise taxes on fuel. Who uses the most fuel in this country? It is people from rural settings with no infrastructure. How does the Government look after us? It raises taxes on the people who have to use the most fuel. The people who use it the most are the same people who have no infrastructure. Where are the taxes spent? They are spent in areas where the Government wants to have more infrastructure, namely in cities like Dublin. The Government must give us back our money. It must invest in infrastructure in rural Ireland and rural Limerick and stop spending our money, raised by taxing us to death, elsewhere. It must give us infrastructure so we can have the same quality of life as others.

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