I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. This time last week, I was in Finland with the Oireachtas education committee. We were there to talk about all things educational but naturally the conversation drifted. We got chatting about their elections and our elections. We finally asked the deputy mayor of Helsinki - we had drifted way off topic - if there were any public projects in his city delayed or overspent on in the past five or six years. He turned to his advisers on the left and right, spoke in a language none of us understood, and he eventually answered us and said "No". There were not. I would love to get to the point in five or six years' time where we are giving similar messages here. Things have become overly convoluted and I commend the Minister because he has started unravelling that knot of red tape. It looks good but now we have the litmus test of how quickly this can all happen. I note the GPO and the National Concert Hall have been picked as two test projects to see how quickly things can be delivered and that is fine. They are both fabulous projects and both mean a lot as they are symbolic to Ireland but, day to day, I would like to see things like hospitals more fast-tracked. University Hospital Limerick needs to be a test bed. We have a plan and pathway forward to develop that, hopefully having a new accident and emergency department in the mid-west region. That should be a test bed project. The other project I wish to mention is the Limerick northern distributor road. Even though it is a Limerick project, it straddles Clare and Limerick. Phase 1 of that is pretty much complete and is going to open in a matter of weeks but phase 2 is just entirely in the doldrums. As I mentioned to him before, the Minister might remember from our childhood that cartoon with Road Runner, where Wile E. Coyote would chase Road Runner out of town. There was always that road at the edge of town where everything just dropped off; there was a cliff edge. That is what the Limerick northern distributor road will look like when its first phase is completed this year. It just ends at a roundabout in my home village of Meelick. It goes no place else, so I would like to see that activated. About three years ago, the Minister sat in a car in Ennis and drove some of the exits from and entrances to the motorway. He met with a woman who lost her husband in a very tragic accident. I am glad to say that motorway access is now being fixed, which is part of this. That is largely due to the Minister's intervention that day. He stepped out of the ministerial car and went in her car. We drove through it and he got to see it first hand. That is now happening and it is hugely appreciated.

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