Matt Shanahan warns Greens risk losing South East over funding

Minister, let me firstly put my green credentials on the record. I have sold commercial green energy solutions. I was part of a consortium that successfully lobbied in Brussels for changes to alternative fuels feedstock specifications. I am no climate denier. You, Minister, have warned us on many occasions about the urgent need to address climate change. But, Minister, I have a warning of sorts for you. I have outlined in this House to both the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste the lack of funding that is being directed to the South East region and its population. As a partner in government, you bear responsibility for this also. You are almost halfway through your government term, Minister, and the pattern is now set. We have seen you in action. We have seen what you really care about. At this point, it is my view that you have lost the South East region, Minister, that at the next election, the voters of the South East will turn away from you and, more importantly, from your green agenda. The Green Movement received a mandate from the South East. 10% of the country has given you two of your Dáil seats. That is the same mandate given to Fine Gael. If the South East turns on you, Minister, it will not be because of climate change denial, but because of your failure to deliver on the mandate entrusted to you. Job number one of this government in your department was the Dunn-Kettle interchange. Signed off with undue haste, you bent to the Cork cabal, with what, percentage-wise, is a project further out of budgetary control than the National Children's Hospital. Meanwhile, the M24, Limerick, Cork, Wexford, pivotal route infrastructure for the South East was binned. An entirely preventable blood price continues to be paid on the N24 and N25 for spending decisions made in this house by your department and now by you, Minister. Waterford Airport is fighting for its life. Waterford Airport, closed off from regional airport funding of £160 million, which has been bunged largely into dysfunctional DAA outfits and disproportionately into Cork Airport, in what was the fastest capital project completed in the state. At the same time, your department would do all support funding previously committed to you at Waterford Airport, which is now threatening its very existence. University Hospital Waterford, the South East Regional Trauma and Cardiac Centre, continues to be starved of capital resources and headcount, continues to have one of the highest outpatient lists in the country, and still no relief in sight coming for the most underfunded Model 4 hospital in the state. This is what the voters of the South East Sea Minister, when they think, want green, vote green. We also see your partners in government's strategy of waiting you out on the M20, the Shannon LNG terminal, CETA and other multiple initiatives. Failure to deliver for the South East, these things are commonly being delivered elsewhere, Minister, will, in my opinion, implode green politics in the region. Mark my words, Minister, the South East is not a cabinet, yet day by day we look unappalled by your government's decision making and the inequity around it. So my question to you, Minister, in the remaining time of your government, what will you deliver for this region, a region that has given you your mandate? Thank you very much, Minister. Can I say, for a start, I don't think any deputy in this House needs to explain or burnish or think one is better than the other in terms of green credentials. I think, actually, like in our country, there's broad, widespread consensus understanding that the science is real and the likes of climate change we have to act. I read in detail, as well as attending some of the debates yesterday, and while there's heated debate and discussion on some of the policy solutions, the underlying problem, including deputies from the rural independence group, when I read their debate contribution yesterday, everyone agreed that we have to address this environmental challenge in front of us. Not a single deputy, in me reading the full extracts yesterday, did I read someone saying, we don't have to act. So, one of the first things... Please, please, please. I think, Danny, I think your brother yesterday, his own contribution, if I recall reading it, recognising that now electric vehicles are the better cars, and that we do need to make this switch in his own contribution yesterday. Well, wait, now, can we go back to Deputy Shanahan, maybe? But just to make the point, this does not belong to anyone, party, independent or otherwise. And it will not work if we're pointing to the figure of one person versus the other. And it is going to be, you'll recall, I met you when we went down to WIT a few months ago, when I went into the council, and my sense of Waterford City Council, County Council, is they're absolutely up for it, that they're actually committed. They were all talking about how we put in the resources to make this happen. I don't know if you were up there. There was an event in Ross Lair last week on the development of the port as an offshore renewables. I don't know if you were at it. But there was 150 people there, and my sense is the community is right behind the opportunity that exists in the southeast, as well as in other parts of the country, into tapping into that resource. I remember after meeting you in the Waterford Council, we went down, do you remember, down to the river with the county manager, and we were looking at the site where we're going to put the new bridge across the shore, the new mobility, the walking and public transport bridge. Well, we're going, you know, that's going to tender now. That's real. And I could go on. There is no area of this country, we will not work on the scale of the just transition jump we're going to have to make if any place is left behind. It has to belong to everyone and be involved everywhere. And Waterford, in my mind, more than anyone else, Waterford City, in my mind, if I just pick on the city, has a huge opportunity, in my mind, to become the capital of the southeast, to actually grow, particularly on the North Quays and into Ferry Bank. I know if there's any deputies here, I'd be running into trouble. But I think I see Waterford as a city that is absolutely primed to develop as a sustainable centre. And it's already happening. The amount of jobs that have been delivered in Waterford in the last year, and that the type of jobs and the type of people and the type of companies that are going to be part and want to be part of this green transition. So I fundamentally disagree with the analysis that we're not looking to the southeast as part of this transition. My department, and certainly our party, is going to do everything to get the jobs, the investment and the good local environment in the southeast for the good of the people, as well as the wider global challenge we have to face. Deputy Shanahan, Deputy Shanahan, please. Thank you, Minister. And yes, indeed, I did accompany you on those initiatives that you discussed, Minister. But I'd say one thing to you. Resources, resources, resources. I have seen more reports about the southeast at this stage. I could walk on the paper from Waterford to Dublin on it, Minister. But there is no delivery, Minister. And I think that you confuse the green agenda with a government agenda of delivery. The only boots that we have on the ground in the southeast is a chain of chemists, Minister. And all the projects that you have outlined, although laudable they all are, none of them are underway as yet. And we are being promised, promised, promised. Funding to our airport has not occurred. Funding to our hospital has not occurred. Funding to the IT has not yet occurred, Minister. Funding for the North Quays, although promised, has not yet been released. So, Minister, we need, and what I'm asking you, you have two and a half years done in this government, I've asked you the question, will you commit to the delivery, not just of the green agenda, but to the social and economic agenda of water that has been crying out and has deserved, and it has been denied for the past 20 years? Some of my colleagues' words are ringing my ears to point out the truth, as I understand it, that the emergency department in Waterford Hospital is the top rating in the country. I'm the most underfunding, Minister. But if I'm a patient, what I want to be is in the very best centre, and what I hear is, what I hear told, is that Waterford is the best. The land is waiting, Minister. The best. The best. I'm also told. The hospital minister in the country. So, it is patently obvious we are very efficient, but we are totally under-resourced. Can the Minister respond? I'm also told that that second cath lab is under construction as we speak. Now, that's resources being deployed. Would you agree? 2010, Minister, that commitment was given. That is a real example. Third example, it's being built as we speak. Third example, God almighty, this was called for a long time, WIT as a university status. Has that not been delivered in this government? Another facility with 20 years of no investment. But I tell you what, I've sensified this, and the one of opportunity, when we were at that meeting at WRT, in the boardroom, meeting all the directors of services of the university there, university in Waterford, that there are good people, that we have real skills. Yes, I agree with you, they should have got funding for the mixed-word grass resources. Yes, yes. We agree on that, but don't underestimate the skills in that institution. Don't underestimate the rise in Waterford onto this green agenda. That's the story of our future.