Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State in his new role and congratulate him. It is fantastic to hear about the new future Ireland fund and the infrastructure, climate and nature fund. It is fantastic they have been welcomed internationally and here by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. It looks in particular at four areas, including demography. I believe our population is now 5.2 million and it is getting older, living active and healthy lives. The other areas are decarbonisation, digitalisation and deglobalisation. I come from the west of Ireland. Any time you talk to the Western Development Commission, it will tell you clearly about the balance of investment in this country and that at European Union level, the west and the north west are designated as a different region because we do not see the same level of investment. My request of our Ministers is for balanced regional investment of this fund when it is used across some of the areas mentioned.

I have always talked to our colleagues, Ministers and former taoisigh about the electronic health patient shared record. It is a care record. I think it is now called a shared care record. It is hard to know. The name changes every few years. We still do not have electronic digital online access for every person in this State in respect of the care he or she receives across the country. This is a major lack in our health service. It would incredibly transform the type of care in primary care and within our communities. Sláintecare is all about delivering care in the communities and I am at a loss as to how that can be done when we are looking to keep people in their homes. We are talking about demography and digitalisation and how we can have assistive technologies for older people, people with additional needs and children's additional needs. Those are the things we need to see. Those are things that indigenous innovative Irish companies, start-ups and VCs coming out of colleges would have so many ideas about. I previously worked in Health Innovation Hub Ireland. I have seen those companies with amazing ideas. The challenge is that it is really difficult to access data, statistics and knowledge about our systems because we do not have online health records. This is crucial and it would transform. It is about building with digitalisation and linking in with our demography and the fact that our population is getting older.

The fund is particularly around decarbonisation. I come from east Galway and Roscommon. Those two areas are included in the European Union Just Transition Fund. That EUJTF is being rolled out. Part of that, that is, more than €180 million, half of which is from the Exchequer, is being rolled out to those counties and the midlands. The challenge is that it comes through Fáilte Ireland, which is wonderful if businesses and individuals can apply for these funds. The challenge is that we do not have the tourism infrastructure. It is also extremely limited. As for the type of companies that can apply, to give an example, a wonderful restaurant and café may look for additional accommodation or log cabins. Put simply, it needs to have planning permission in place. The deadlines for these processes and programmes for funding is June this year for expression of interest and December.Those businesses may not be able to avail of the €180 million that is coming down through a number of different strands.

When it comes to decarbonisation, I want to see the balanced measures for local employment and driving investment into our regions. To me, the lack of balanced regional investment is visible in many ways. One of these is transport, in terms of local links. The Aircoach service between Dublin and Galway and the X20 and 20 Bus Éireann services have been removed. We want balanced regional investment and we need to see how this fund will provide that. We need to tackle demography, decarbonisation, digitisation and deglobalisation, which means local communities driving this.