Pa Daly

Overall sentiment: -0.05
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I want to talk in the few minutes I have about some capital projects in Kerry, which badly need to be progressed. In a county like Kerry, with 13 blue flag beaches, mountains, lakes and coastline that are the envy of many, unfortunately we have a major structural deficit. In order for people to reside in their own home areas, we need a massive injection of funding to bring us up to a level that is taken for granted in some of those other counties. Yesterday, I was in Castlegregory, where I met Pat Barry and John Buckley to discuss the challenges for the development of that village. The sewerage system, if you could call it that, is no more than an open pit and an Imhoff tank, which was probably built 70 years ago. It is fewer than 25 m from the local secondary school and about 150 m to 200 m from one of the 13 blue flag beaches in the county. It is a village that has been repeatedly overlooked for investment. I am asking the Minister to inject more money into the programme for wastewater treatment plant systems in Kerry and to include Castlegregory in that. There are ecological and health imperatives to this. I received some emission limit values from tests that have been done. While I accept that Irish Water has carried out some works in the past few years with pipes, rebuilt manholes, etc., there is nowhere close to reasonable effluent quality. In fact, there is an argument that it is actually worse coming out of the pit that is near the centre of the village than anywhere else. I would love to be able to say that Castlegregory is alone in this but there are other villages in Kerry such as Ballyduff, Fenit - which has a similar Imhoff tank or pit near another blue flag beach - and Abbeydorney, to name but a few, where more funding is necessary for these purposes. I also want to raise the need for a public building on the Denny site in Tralee. We recently asked for a meeting with Kerry County Council. There is a building that is owned, I understand, by a Canadian pension fund. The education and training board, ETB, the Courts Service and the HSE are renting properties from it. An opportunity has arisen because the old town council was granted a site on the old Denny factory in the middle of the town. The ETB is paying about €300,000 per year, the Courts Service is paying over €100,000 and the HSE refused to say how much it is paying when I asked it in a parliamentary question but I will get to the bottom of that later. The Minister can be sure that there is over €500,000 in State funding being paid every year for rental on this property. I ask the Minister to encourage Kerry County Council and make funding available to it in order to construct a building that will save money and bring the 140 people who are currently working there into the centre of town where they will be spending money on the retail offering that is in the town centre. Last week I asked about the roof of the Bryan MacMahon hall at Scoil Réalta na Maidine, the boys' school in Listowel. It is 70 years old and was not constructed to modern building practices. I ask the Minister to make funding available for that. Last but not least, we have been waiting three years, since the Maskey report showed there were 46 children exposed to significant harm and 240 children at risk of harm in south Kerry, and still the north Kerry review has not been published. Over €2 million, I understand, has been spent on it. I was told in July that the north Kerry report would be made available as soon as possible. The file reviews were completed then-----

Sentiment score: 0.00

-----but there is still no sign of it. Would the Minister ever get that published so that the people can have answers and be included in the scheme, and so that the children who are at risk of heavy weight gain and an awful lot of other difficulties are not further punished by having to pay for their own medical reports? If they are in the scheme, they do not have to pay for it. It is inexcusable that they have not been included in it to date.

Sentiment score: -0.11