Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I do not trust this plan. No engineer would stand up and justify it as the basis for spending €34 billion. It is a considerable achievement for this Government of wasters to convince the people of Cork that an announcement, which delays the introduction of suburban rail in Cork, is good news. Two years ago, it was announced that suburban rail would be in place by 2007 but now it will not happen until 2008. I was promised five years ago that a motorway would be built between Dublin and Cork by next year but it will not be completed until 2010. The best thing about the Atlantic corridor is the name, although I did not think the Atlantic touched Waterford. The road must reach Waterford for obvious reasons. Timescales or costings have not been provided. As the man said on television last night, we have also been presented with the western rail cul-de-sac, which will terminate at Claremorris. I have great respect for Claremorris but it should not be the terminus for many journeys when building a rail network. Could we have a debate on this plan? Could we also have all the background documentation from the wonderful Department of Finance to establish the costings, rationale and basis for the plan? We do not know how the officials arrived at these figures but we deserve to know.

I seek a debate on the Ferns report. The irony of the dismissal of a teacher in Enniscorthy in the Ferns diocese dawned on me last week because she committed the heinous sin of living with a man who was not her husband and having a baby with him while others carried on for years and years in the most scandalous way. We need to get a handle on this so that we are not diverted into a debate on what the State did wrong. The only thing the State did wrong was to succumb to the pressures of the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to leave them to do what they told everybody they were better at than the State. We must reassert that no one has the right to demand flexibility in the law of the land.

I may be in a minority in believing from the outset the invasion of Iraq to have been immoral and illegal.