Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise an issue I have spoken about before. It is the national primary route, the N5, and the Dublin to Westport route and particularly the bypass between Ballaghaderreen and Scramoge, which has been a danger to the public for many years. Industry also has been complaining that when transporting goods from the west to the east to the ports, a lot of material in trucks gets damaged. We got the go-ahead a year and a half ago for that €200 million project. Unfortunately, because of the war the company that got the project ran into difficulties and could not proceed. Thankfully a new process was opened up and I understand that we have made good progress on the tendering process. We really need to get that project up and running as quickly as possible. I do not know whether we should write to Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, or to the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, or maybe both but whatever the Deputy Leader sees fit, we need to ask where we are with that tender because it is extremely important. While the Government is totally committed financially to it, it is important that we get the tender up and running and get that work under way as quickly as possible. It is ready to go. All of the paperwork had been done and if we could get this up and running as quickly as possible, it would be great.

Finally, I will mention another issue, which I come across more and more, very quickly. The HSE cannot provide home help hours to families in desperate need of help hours. I do not know whether there is some other procedure we could look at. Maybe we could ask the relevant Ministers whether we could ask people to source it themselves and then financially support them, were they able to get that help. I do not know if it is possible to do something like that but some families would be willing to source it and probably could get people to do it if they could then get the financial support. The Deputy Leader could take up this issue for me as well.