Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael)

I welcome this conversation. I thank the Minister of State for coming into us today. Unlike my esteemed colleague, I did not get the chance to visit the rest of the country on the canvass for the Seanad, so I will talk about Roscommon and my area. I concur with Senator Cosgrove about the plan the Northern and Western Regional Assembly produced as well as a call for overall balanced regional development. Unfortunately, the plan the Senator referred to has very little reference to Roscommon in it. The infrastructure projects are very lacking in that. One project that was in the county development plan and the previous plan was the N5 from Scramoge to Ballaghaderreen, which the Government and the previous Government have significantly invested in. We expect it to be opened early next year but it will have an impact on the other roads that come from it and the other areas.

Since I was a young boy, there has been reference to looking after the N60 from Roscommon to Ballyhaunis. In the 2022-2028 plan, it speaks of an upgrade of that route and looking at developing a strategy to upgrade that route. That was a copy and paste job from the previous plan and the plan before that. With the upgrades that have happened on the N5, we are about to put significant traffic on that particular road. That will probably be at a specific junction that is already at creaking point in Castlerea. It is a place called "Hell's Kitchen corner" in Castlerea. The traffic will come from Frenchpark and the N60. It will not be able to deal with the volume of traffic turning right towards Williamstown, Dunmore, Ballyhaunis and that particular area. I recently conducted an accessibility survey with the Brothers of Charity rehabilitation care in Castlerea. That particular junction was highlighted as a major issue for all of the service users in Castlerea. To think that we are about to significantly increase the traffic using that is a very big problem.I wish to mention the N60 once more in relation to that.

I also concur with my colleague on purpose-built housing and age-friendly housing. It will open up a lot more housing in rural Ireland such as in my area. While talking about disability services, I would like to mention the potential for a disability service in Castlerea, County Roscommon in an old derelict building called Hanley Hall that the diocese is open to making available for that purpose. CBS Roscommon, Roscommon Community College, Abbey Community College in Boyle and Elphin Community College are all earmarked for expansion but by the time the expansion happens, we will have to look at additional expansion. Can this be factored in? The time it will take to deliver these school projects means they will already need more capacity by the time they are ready, especially sports facilities. We are lucky enough. Senator Brady spoke yesterday about an athlete from Longford who performed very well at the weekend. In the past two weeks, we welcomed home 75 kg world champion Aoife O'Rourke to my own town, Castlerea. We have athletes performing above their potential. An awful lot more could meet their potential if we had the facilities within our education system, which we are already investing in.