Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this very important motion. The A5 route linking North and South is a critical piece of infrastructure and a major route for people living and working in the Border counties and across the north west. The A5 road from Aughnacloy to Derry is in urgent need of upgrades to improve safety and reduce fatalities. This road development project is vital to the economy and people of Donegal and the north west. The current state of the A5 road is deeply concerning with an increasing number of fatalities in recent years. We cannot ignore the devastating impact of these accidents on families and their communities.

People in the North are not the only ones affected. We are also the victims of a Minister who is the only Minister with responsibility for roads I have ever known of who hates building roads. He does not want us to build roads. We have €1 million a day in Ireland, or €365 million a year, for cycleways and paths for walking, which is great, but we would like a little money for roads as well. We would like to have a Minister who keeps his interfering nose out of stopping vital road projects that we want, not just in Kerry but throughout the rest of the country. That is wrong. It is blackguarding and it is reprehensible to think that we have a Minister who would endanger the lives of people and upset working people, who are the people who pay his wages, by not allowing road projects to go ahead, as well as being interfering, dilly-dallying, and what else I would not like to say, in interfering with work. He might not be that interested in work but some of us are.

I very much support Sinn Féin Members in this. They are right to bring this to the floor of the House. It gives us a chance to highlight that there is more to life than snails, frogs, birds and the like. There is a thing called human beings. We are interested in protecting species but we are also interested in protecting the human species, when it comes to transporting them from A to B. Every species is important, including human beings.

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