For the day that is in it, it may have won the vote of confidence but I can assure the Minister that his Government has lost the support - if it ever had it - and the confidence of the people. Public services are under huge pressure. Many services do not work properly and we see billions of hard-earned euro wasted, often due to poor planning. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are serious wasters of public funding. Never has so much been spent to deliver so little. Much of our infrastructure is crumbling. Our housing crisis continues with 17,000 people in emergency accommodation and we have a broken planning process. A total of 22,200 children are waiting on their legal entitled assessment of needs. Critical infrastructure is not planned for or delivered. This is the legacy of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for 100 years. On this Bill in particular, waiving the pre-legislative scrutiny is a mistake. Given the Government's record of failure to deliver value for money, the Opposition is right to be critical of that. Bills should face all opportunities for scrutiny in order that we strengthen them and are not correcting a mistake after the Bill has been enacted. A concern of mine is that the Bill does not define what critical infrastructure is but rather leaves that to the gift of the Minister. When we talk about infrastructure we all have our own projects in our own areas, but talking about Limerick and the Munster region, we obviously look at the Limerick to Cork motorway. It is long promised and not delivered. They are probably the only two regional cities or second and third cities across western Europe that are not connected by motorway and it will be years before that is done. In Limerick, we recently opened the Coonagh to Knockalisheen road. It is not completed but that was over 20 years in planning and was hard fought for by the communities in Moyross in particular to get it over the line. Another piece of infrastructure that is needed in Limerick is the northern distributor road. Businesses will say they need this, as will IBEC and universities, whether the Technological University of the Shannon on one side or University of Limerick at the other side, to relieve the pressure on the north side of Limerick and south-east Clare, where it is particularly needed. It would really be an extension of the Coonagh to Knockalisheen road, and that is not even in the national development plan. It was pulled by the Green Party in the previous Government and there is no sign of it in this Government. It is an economic artery for Limerick. As I have said, it would service both universities and the business park in the Castletroy area, which are struggling. Traffic is unbelievable and we need to sort that out soon. We have people backed up on the Mackey roundabout and they cannot get off on the M7 or the motorway to access Limerick. Bus services in Limerick, where they do exist, are unfortunately sometimes not reliable. Sometimes they are non-existent. One example of that is the Condell Road in the city. I have raised that before. We have a bus lane in that area. The bus lane has been there for a number of years but there is actually no local bus service on it. We have built hundreds of local authority houses and affordable houses through approved housing bodies in the area but there is no bus connection. Rail services, where they exist, are very slow and very sparse. For instance, we have the Castleconnell to Limerick city service and, for some inexplicable reason, we cannot deliver extra capacity and extra services on that. It is a no-brainer. Then we come to the issue of offshore wind. We have the unique opportunity in the Limerick area, particularly with the Foynes Port, the deepest port in the island and a huge stretch of river. As the world is moving into critical danger, if we do not deliver to make our country energy secure with the opportunity to do it through offshore wind, we will be buying that from abroad. We have the opportunity to buy our own, make ourselves energy sufficient and export wind or we can buy it back in ourselves. The HIQA report launched on 30 September had three options in it. We still do not know if we are going to build a second hospital in the mid-west. While this is committed to, there is no plan for it and no management committee set up. There is no progress on that and we do not know where we are. Trolley numbers in Limerick this week have been some of the highest we have seen across the State.

Sentiment score: 0.01