Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I raise the matter of how we reimagine how we will live post Covid. We have all learned many lessons over the last 12 months about how we live our lives, including within our own 5 km. Our priorities have changed. The closeness of family is acutely important. There is an ongoing process in many of our counties, not least my own county, Kildare, regarding county development plans. We are now looking at issues papers and asking people to define what is important to them in how their communities and towns should grow in the context of the county development plan. I would like to think that we have begun the process of reimagining how we can live post Covid. That means that we can look at making remote working permanent.No more would people have to get up as early as 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. to drive to railway stations or to clog up the roads and no more would they have to get on overcrowded and overpriced trains or drop very young children to childminders at that unearthly hour of the morning. We can look at remote working in such a way as to allow people to live in their own settlements, villages and towns. People should be able to build houses close to family members. I would like the Minister to issue a request to all local authorities that are dealing with county development plans to look at those plans again and to reimagine them in a way which would support those rural areas. People have been crying out to live in these areas for years so as to be close to their family units but they have not been allowed to do so. We need to do that.

We also need to reimagine how we live our lives as we get older. A Newbridge resident, Mr. Pat O'Mahony, has written an excellent book on community living and coming together. An example of such community living is McCauley Place in Naas. Some may have seen it or heard about it. Some documentaries about it have been shown. We in Newbridge have a once in a lifetime opportunity in this regard. The monastery has just come up for sale. It would be a wonderful place in which to provide for independent living for older people and, possibly, to provide day-care services for people with Alzheimer's disease because we are looking for a place to provide such services at the moment.

My last point relates to Mr. Pat Tinsley and amyloidosis, about which I have spoken here before. We were all devastated to learn on Friday that the request for funding for patisiran has been turned down. I would like to see a debate on how the extra €50 million for those diseases is to be spent.