Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As I said, the Taoiseach met Deirdre Ryan, one of the protagonists in trying to get the pool open to the public of Templemore, and it is clearly not his view that this is Government policy. As for energy saving, surely swimming lessons for the children of Templemore is an activity that warrants public expenditure. This notion it is for energy saving just does not wash and is not acceptable. I want the OPW and the authorities at the college to revisit this decision immediately.

They have also said they will not allow licences to be issued on a commercial basis. When an instructor is hired to give lessons, he or she has to be paid, yet they are saying that is a commercial activity. Again, that is not acceptable. No one is making a fortune out of giving swimming lessons to the children of the locality. They get a few euro to cover their expenses, as they have done for many years. I do not accept the idea this is an energy-saving measure in line with Government policy and, as I said, the Head of Government has stated he does not accept it.

I want the Minister for Justice, the Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW and the Garda authorities to get this matter sorted out as soon as possible. Thankfully, in the programme for Government and this year's budget, it was announced that a significant number of recruits will start in the depot early in the new year, and the pool will be open for them at that stage. We want this decision to be reversed immediately. There are children in the locality whose siblings had swimming lessons there. To tell us this is an energy-saving measure is piling insult on top of insult. The swimming pool at the college has been used since 1965 with no problems. Granted, in 2017, there were issues with licences and so on, but they were smoothed out. Some civil servant is taking the view that this will look good on the bottom line. We are not accepting that and we want the decision to be reversed.

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