Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

Everything about which I will speak this morning is a crisis. I asked the Leader to intervene last week with regard to the pharmacy issue. We are within ten days of the deadline. Have we given up on talks? Has the Leader had any success in persuading the Minister for Health and Children to pull back from the 1 March deadline so that talks can be reopened with the Irish Pharmaceutical Union? I fully support the €100 million savings, as do the pharmacists who are more than willing to find ways to identify those savings without closing rural pharmacies. Again, we will hurt the sickest patients and I do not believe in putting pharmacists in rural areas out of business. Carraghroe is at risk, to name one.

I support the call for a debate on the funding of schools. The Minister will be in the House this morning but she will not be dealing with the funding of schools. The summer works scheme has been pulled, while the devolved scheme has been slashed. We know about water charges and the serious underfunding of primary schools. It shows that the Minister has done no forward planning and is desperate in respect of financing the new model of schools. I ask her not to let our schools fall apart.

I ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to come to the House to examine what is nothing less than an environmental crisis in Galway in respect of water and sewerage. I was in Connemara last weekend attending clinics. Clifden Bay is contaminated. A total of 80% of the water tested by the Environmental Protection Agency is below acceptable safety levels. If anyone fell into Clifden Bay, he or she would be killed. That is how bad the situation is. A fatal accident could occur there.

Many activities in Clifden Bay, such as boating, sailing and fund-raising events, have been called off because of the state of the water. The same is true of Oughterard. One person told me that a report they read in the Connacht Tribune last month about the stage the sewerage scheme was at was the same as that read in the same newspaper in 1999. I ask Green Party Members to convey to the Minister the extent to which the environmental situation in certain counties, particularly Galway, has been left behind. I have a feeling that the water crisis that has gripped Galway is bubbling in many other counties. Let us address this issue. A boiled water notice is still in use in Clarebridge.