One of the biggest problems of this Government over the past ten to 15 years has been its absolute inability to build infrastructure. Probably the biggest legacy element of the Government is that it cannot deliver necessary infrastructure and could not deliver it on time. Regardless of whether we are looking at housing, healthcare and hospitals, transport infrastructure like motorways, rail lines and roads or water infrastructure, it is a hallmark or fingerprint of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that they simply cannot deliver infrastructure. One of the reasons for that the fact most of their Ministers are simply passengers on the bus. They are reading press statements delivered by the permanent government, they are not in charge of the direction of Departments and they are not driving the situation for people. This is having an enormous impact on people's lives. On a range of different issues now the fabric of society is being negatively affected by the Government's inability to build infrastructure. For years I have noticed that when an election comes up the Government does not want to talk about the subject of infrastructure that affects people's lives. It is much happier to launch a tax cut at a certain rate to get on the front pages of the Sunday papers before an election. The Government has never taken infrastructure properly seriously over the past number of years. A number of things are happening. After the crash, the Government for ten years had the lowest spend on infrastructure in the whole of the European Union bar Romania. Only Romania beat us to the bottom rung of that ladder for infrastructural spend. For more than a decade we did not even keep up with the depreciation of our capital infrastructure, never mind building the new infrastructure. The second thing is that there has been a massive increase in population. The infrastructural capital we have is coming under enormous pressure from the population increase. The third element is the lack of accountability in the system. Due to the lack of accountability in the system, there has not been the necessary pressure to make sure infrastructural development is happening. That is having a large effect on society. In terms of housing, water infrastructure has an enormous impact. Uisce Éireann appeared at the infrastructure committee a couple of months ago. I asked its representatives how long it would take them to fill the gaps in water infrastructure that are currently blocking the building of homes in Ireland. They said, as if it were a positive, that by 2050 they will have those gaps filled. For at least another 25 years, we will have the absence of water infrastructure preventing the building of homes in Ireland. The housing crisis is going on so long that people have nearly become used to it. However, it is still shocking to think the housing crisis could be rolling on for another 25 years. Another element is the massive level of leakages that are happening. In the Dublin area we know that 35% of water that is treated and pumped through the system is being lost through the haphazard infrastructure in the Dublin region. At the same time the Government is looking to take water from the acting chair's constituency in the Parteen basin and pump it to Dublin, a project that will cost billions of euro if it happens on time at all, rather than fixing the problem that exists. Most people's first instinct, where you are losing product and replacing it, is to fix where you are losing it, so you do not have the added cost of generating more of the product to fill what is being lost. The first responsibility of a government is to keep the lights on and put water in the taps. Right now, this Government is famously failing to keep the lights on. There are many electricity outages throughout the country at the moment, which are hardly being reported. It also needs to put water in the taps. I will give an example from my constituency in County Meath. In the past two years there have been 125 water outages in the Trim area. That is incredible. That is Third World standard. It is developing country standard delivery of infrastructure. It is incredible. During Christmas gone by a whole swathe of Trim had no water for three days over Christmas. This is not a luxury product we are talking about. For people with disabilities, older people and people with young children, this is an absolute necessity and yet the Government has not been able to deliver that water into the infrastructure on time and when needed. It is not a once-off; it is 125 times. Water infrastructure in the whole of County Meath is massively underdelivered. That has had a negative effect on our ability to bring industry into the county and to create jobs and therefore business rates that go into the development of community facilities, including such things as playgrounds. Even in places like Enfield, Ballivor and Summerhill we have had tanks of water being driven into those towns to deliver water to individuals. We have had cafes, shops and restaurants closing for full days with the loss of that income because of the lack of water delivery. This has not been happening for a week, a month or a year. It is happening for well over a decade. It is astounding that Fianna Fáil cannot do infrastructure. It is a disaster when it comes to infrastructure. As a result, there is major suffering in society. It took two hours for people in Meath to get to work in Dublin today because of the lack of a rail line Noel Dempsey promised in 1996 that if we are lucky will be completed in 2036; 42 years from concept to completion. It was built in three years in 1896 with picks and shovels. That is the compare and contrast of this Government's inability to build infrastructure now compared with what it was in the past. Sewage being deposited in rivers and in the sea in this country is an absolute disgrace. If it were farmers, business people or any other sector of society the State would be down on them like a ton of bricks. There would be massive fines and real pressure put on those individuals to make sure they are cleaning the water before it gets into the rivers. This Government through its public companies is delivering sewage wholesale into the water system, doing enormous damage to drinking water, bathing water and to the biodiversity that exists in many of the rivers in this country. Our water systems are sick because of this Government's lack of ability to build infrastructure. Contrast that with the billions of euro at its disposal. We have nothing to show for the billions of euro we have received over the past two decades, except incompetency.

Sentiment score: -0.10