The supposed purpose of the Bill is to speed up the delivery of infrastructure and get various different bodies to work together. I would welcome any genuine attempt to simplify planning and speed up infrastructure delivery, which takes forever and a day to get moving, to deliver it on time and at the target cost while environmental laws and regulations are not ridden roughshod over. However, the Bill has all the hallmarks of being about that. It is important that infrastructure delivery be accelerated and that it be brought in on time and on budget but sections 2, 3, 5 and 6 provide that the Minister can give directions to relevant bodies. Section 7 is the eye-opener where it disapplies section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act to designated projects. When we had previous infrastructure legislation back in the 2000s, it was declared that it was only for public projects, but it turned out to be for private projects so it looks like data centres and everything else are included. That is no way to put public infrastructure in place. We need to do everything efficiently, but not at the cost of everything else and of rubbing out local democracy and riding roughshod over good environmental laws. It does nothing to improve any of that. In fact, it is quite the opposite. I will turn to County Laois for a moment. The Minister for local government notified the local authority in Laois that he wants 5,000 more homes in the county. That is grand, but what he did not say was what infrastructure would be put in. Portlaoise, which has been targeted for a lot of that growth, needs a new primary school, which Ministers have told me in the House we do not need, despite the fact that hundreds of children are being bussed all over the county to school because there are no school places for them in Portlaoise, including the children on the estate where I live. Laois is a relatively small county but 12,000 people are commuting out of it every morning to work, according to a local authority survey. Childcare cannot be accessed. Childcare places simply are not available in most of the county. We need one of the centres the Government has planned to deliver directly urgently in Laois. We could do with all eight in Laois and we would have just about enough. On wastewater facilities, I outlined in the House a few months ago that a number of towns and villages need wastewater and water treatment facilities and for water supply to be accelerated if we are going to have houses in them. Towns and villages such as Ballinakill, Borris-in-Ossory, Durrow, Ballylynan, Rathdowney, Mountmellick, Graiguecullen and so on are all short of infrastructure. The courthouse in Portlaoise has not been delivered. We are still one of the nine counties without a domestic abuse refuge in 2026, and families and particularly women and children are being sent all over the place because we simply do not have the facility for them in the county. This is not good enough. The Bill does not address any of that. I have real concerns about this. Critical infrastructure legislation was brought in in the 2000s and I recall arguing on local radio with Deputy Seán Fleming about it at the time. I was a local councillor and I recall pointing out what was going to happen and what it would do to destroy local democracy and ride roughshod over good planning rules. The Bill is being presented without pre-legislative scrutiny. I have huge concerns about this. I would like the Minister to bring one issue to the attention to the Minister for local government. If he is going to demand all these houses are built in Laois, we will need infrastructure. There is no orbital route in Portlaoise. The Portlaoise northern orbital route is the number one priority, along with the Mountmellick link road, which will shorten the route for commuters so that people and particularly trucks will not have to travel as far. They are needed. We cannot have houses without that infrastructure. Where will the houses be built in Laois? Are they going to be built in fields with boreens going up to them or something? That number of houses cannot be put in without infrastructure. I have outlined some of what is needed. It is grand for the boys and girls in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage in the Custom House to draw up these figures and send them down to the county manager and tell him to get the councillors and officials to provide this. It cannot be done if we do not have the infrastructure. This is where we are falling down. A funding package was announced for the national development plan a few months ago and Laois was ignored in it, despite all the promises before the election. That is where we are.

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