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

I am glad to get the opportunity to say a few words about the missed opportunities in this budget. There was very little in it for farmers. I have been on about solar panels months and perhaps years. There was a promise that farmers would qualify for a 60% grant to put in solar panels, which could produce anywhere between 60% to 80% of their overall power consumption on farms. However, the system sizes accepted by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are rejected by the ESB, causing farmers to install smaller systems which will only produce 30% to 40% of their power. The ESB infrastructure is not up to standard. The Government is not prepared to do anything about that only Deputy Eamon Ryan comes out promising all these schemes. I can say loud and clear all he has done in his reign is drive up, with carbon tax, the cost of petrol, fuel, diesel and all the things people use every day.

If the Government was there for the next 100 years, it will not change the weather. It can get that into its skulls. All of these climate actions the Government is taking are costing the Exchequer and the taxpayer money and it is being used unwisely. It is very unfair. We saw what the Government did at the two doors at the back of here and at the front, with the hut going into the car park at the back at a cost of €1.4 million and with the bicycle shed costing €336,000. If the Government is squandering that kind of money here inside in this premises, what is it doing out around the country? It is very unfair.

Then we had people who were so dependent on the need to reduce the rate of VAT who came up here yesterday and we went through that story this morning. It is absolutely shameful the way the Government squandered money in this Bill. There is no way we can vote for it because of the things the Minister has left out. The carers who save the country so much money where we asked the Government to disregard and not to have any means test and it did not oppose the motion. We felt sure then that the Government would allow this and do something meaningful in the budget but it did not do that.

There are so many places where things were left out. On sewerage infrastructure in our county, 38 treatment plants need assistance, expansion and extensions. In a place like Castleisland, in 1986 it looked for an extension to the sewerage system and treatment plant there. That was nearly 40 years ago now and there is no word since. The Government talks about building houses. Houses cannot be built houses if sewerage systems are not in place. That is what the Government is doing in driving people into the towns and villages because they will not be given planning out in their own countryside and there are no treatment plants ready to take them.

On roads, there is a road from Blackwater Bridge to Sneem. It was built for one horse and cart, in many parts of it, and it would not take a second cart as they would not be able to pass each other. They would have to wait at a wider place for the other one to come over. That is the way it is at the present time.

On nurses, the Government is saying that it will increase the bed capacity in the hospitals. It should pay the nurses and bring them back because if we do not have nurses, we cannot operate hospital beds.

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