Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to be associated with the comments of Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan in respect of the late Dan Wallace. He was a good friend of mine, a Member of this House for over 25 years and a Minister of State. He was a very decent man and a fierce advocate for the people of the north side of Cork. In some respects, I learned the nuts and bolts of electoral politics as a student with Dan Wallace on the north side of Cork, when we canvassed in Gurranabraher, Blackpool and Farranree. He personified the indomitable spirit that characterises the people of the north side of Cork. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. I hope we will have an opportunity at a later date to pay sincere tribute to him.

Deputies O'Sullivan and Séamus McGrath raised the Cork task force. I acknowledge the list of issues that Deputy O'Sullivan raised, including the health facilities and the northern ring road. There is also the issue of the elective hospital, which the Deputy did not raise but has campaigned strongly for. I hope we can get that activated. Deputy McGrath was correct in saying there is underutilisation of buildings in Cork city. In the transportation area, light rail is coming to the city centre. The transformation of Kent Station is a great platform, excuse the pun, to energise the city centre. It will lead, we hope, to a new active travel bridge across the river, which would link to the light rail system. There are great opportunities there. I met representatives of Iarnród Éireann recently in respect of that. We will also be meeting representatives of the NTA.

Safety in the cities of Cork and Dublin, as Deputy Geoghegan said, is, in some respects, the context for much of the work of the task force. We need to reimagine our cities. They are going to be different spaces in the future. I am not sure we will have the big anchor tenants of yesteryear in our cities. Our city centres will become more residential, sharing space with retail, hospitality and other forms of activity. There is a bit of work to be done yet in terms of planning and the contexts that govern developments within our city centres. The safety issue is core. Architecturally, how we design cities and streets has an impact on human behaviour and can also have an impact on safety issues. Very often, stronger residential content or density brings the prospect of self-policing, if you like, or community-based deterrents and so on. We need to examine and explore that issue more deeply than we have done to date.

Garda resources will increase. The Covid-19 pandemic, and the closure of the Garda College in Templemore, stopped a lot of recruitment. It has now been reactivated. Measures have been taken, including an increase in the training allowance and an increase to the age for retirement. We hope we will have better retention. We have more work to do on that front.

The events centre in Cork is going out to tender. It will take time for that to come back in, given the level of investment that is proposed.

No one is more exasperated than me about Moore Street. We had previous agreements that Deputies backed away from. Oireachtas committees met on the issue and thought they had agreement with all parties but that did not turn out to be the case. The GPO is a good example of what can happen in a positive way. I visited the outpatients department of the Coombe hospital, which opened recently and is a good example of how we can bring life back into the city centre. It provides an excellent service for women and there is a good footfall of workers on the street who are availing of the service. It is a top-class facility. We must look for more services of that kind that we can reintroduce to the city centre.

We are expanding public service transport. We are increasing the numbers recruited to Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann. They have had difficulty recruiting. We had to cancel services in Cork city because of the inability to recruit bus drivers as a result of the growth and expansion of our full economy. Let us be clear that the Government has presided over an expansion of public transport services, both rail and bus, with additionality in terms of the numbers of passengers and so on. We will continue to do that.

We would be open to examining the London experience, which was raised by Deputy Cian O'Callaghan.

Deputy Ó Murchú raised the issues of estate management and mental health. His was valid commentary. We must be careful how we say this, but sometimes many issues have underlying causes that do not amount to criminality when we consider the person's mindset or state of health. There are issues there to which we need to attend. Gardaí can be the people who engage in the first instance. It can sometimes be difficult to analyse issues around crime because of the shocking nature of it and the immediacy of the commentary. I know of cases where there was no violence, attempted violence or an engagement where we would find there was a background issue. We must work on mental health, addiction, alcohol use and drug use, which is growing exponentially, in our society. All of that is having a negative impact on behaviour and is leading to violence, particularly late at night and early in the morning. There is no point in saying otherwise. Any parent of young people knows the fear when they go out. There is always concern and worry. We must work hard.

On the children's hospital, the developer, BAM in this case, has submitted claims. There is a process for dealing with those claims. They are robustly contested by the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, and will continue to be. Our objective is to complete the process with proper procedures and systems applying before we get a first-class hospital for the children of the nation.

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