Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

The Department's website will show how far advanced we are. I have also provided a facility for users to make suggestions on how it could be improved. I want to have as many services as possible on-line. To date there are more than 300 Government services accessible on-line as part of the e-government strategy. If any citizen wishes to suggest other services which are not yet on-line, we want to be able to take those ideas. It is a work in progress and we have a way to go.

The Senator referred to the national recovery bank. I am not certain whether he is referring to the Fine Gael NewERA proposal in advance of the general election. The Labour Party had a parallel proposal called the strategic investment bank. I have been in discussions with the National Asset Management Agency, with the National Pensions Reserve Fund and anybody else who will talk to me about how we can structure these things. The National Pensions Reserve Fund has provided €250 million in the past fortnight as seed capital being leveraged up through international financial partners to an initial fund of €1 billion to invest largely in the commercial semi-State sector. It is my ambition to have a number of such funds available for different sectoral investors so that investment in green technology and in other areas can be facilitated with seed capital on a commercial basis. This will be rolled out and the initial fund is up and running.

NewERA has been established. The process of transferring title to some of the State company assets into one holding company to better manage it is under way and legislation will be introduced in that regard in the not too distant future.

Senator Moloney asked about signage. That is a matter best directed to her local county council office. I do not micro-manage to the extent that I know the expenditure of its roads allocation and I suggest local councillors be asked that question. Similarly, as regards sewerage schemes - Senator Moloney says before we attack rural Ireland - the difficulty with regard to septic tanks is that the European Union has a propensity to prevent us from poisoning ourselves and since we do not mind poisoning our ground waters through sewerage schemes, the EU has to use legal action to prevent this. If we do not stop polluting our ground waters by means of septic tanks, we will be fined. I am afraid there is no escaping that logic now and that is the reason the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government is taking the action he is. As I indicated, I am allocating €1.6 billion of the capital programme to water and sanitation schemes and this is a sizeable allocation. As regards her observations on the schools summer works scheme, I know the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, is very anxious to have a scheme and I would be very surprised if such a scheme were not in existence for next year.