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

I thank Raise the Roof for its work, but before you can do any work on raising the roof you have to have infrastructure. I have been in construction all my life and I know the importance of having infrastructure in an area. I will use the example of Limerick and the statistics I have. For 38 years Askeaton has been waiting for the Government, the previous Government and the governments before it to put infrastructure in place to stop raw sewage going into the river. Dromcollogher, the Deel and Hospital have been polluted by the local authority. I am talking about areas such as Glin and Foynes. Does the Minister of State want me to keep talking about all the pollution that has been done to our county because of lack of infrastructure? We have been waiting for infrastructure. What does infrastructure mean? I will tell the Minister of State. If you have proper infrastructure, including sewerage and water, you have houses. If you have houses, you have sustainable business, sustainable sports clubs such as GAA and soccer clubs, and sustainable schools. That is what infrastructure means. However, this Government, the Minister of State's partners in the Government and the previous Government have not invested in infrastructure in County Limerick. We have had a junior Minister in Limerick County for 15 years, with nothing returned for Limerick. We have another junior Minister who celebrated ten years recently, with nothing returned for the area he is elected for. That is not a good record. They have been in power, in positions where they could deliver infrastructure for County Limerick, and they have not done so and they expect people to keep voting for them. People in County Limerick are sick of it. We want our families to return to our county. We want infrastructure that basic humanity needs and that any person should have. We would be quite sustainable by ourselves if we had infrastructure, but the Government cannot see that infrastructure in areas means sustainability in all of Ireland. All it has done is invest in city projects, with county junior Ministers backing the Government all the way.

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