Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I wish to refer to the provision of appropriate infrastructure to assist in the development of our housing targets. I am deeply disturbed by the lack of progress on a number of sewerage schemes that were set up as part of a pilot project in Clare. The Minister fought the battles within his Department to get the schemes at Broadford and Cooraclare moving. I and others drafted the policy position behind it but it received a level of negative interest from departmental officials. The Minister pushed it through and made the announcement. Now, it is bogged down between the Department and the local authority. It is going around in a circle.

It often amazes me when some functions of this State decide to do something, all caution can be thrown to the wind. I do not want to harp on about the cost of this outrageous bike shed outside here, in respect of which apparently nobody had to go through any hoops. However, the €5 million that was set aside for Cooraclare and Broadford is bogged down in a value-for-money, cost-benefit analysis - more looking up and down the road. It needs to get done and it needs to get done now. Once Ministers have taken decisions, they need to be far more forceful in insisting that certain people buried in the bowels of the administrative apparatus move and let it happen. We all know there are officials in the Department for whom a pilot project and all that goes with it require a hell of a lot more work and oversight, but communities need such projects. Politically, we fought the battle. Politically, we won. Politically, the money was set aside, but the wheels grind slowly within the organs of the State except when it is something that suits certain people within.