Martin Kenny
Sligo-Leitrim · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“A debate here for a couple of hours is fine, but I remember being involved in some of the deep talks with people in the early days of the peace process. We sat in rooms and talked about reconciliation. I met Garret FitzGerald on many occasions at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.”
“Of course, we have the areas of natural constraint payments that most farmers on this side of the Border avail of. Unfortunately, those payments are no longer available in the North. Sinn Féin has recommended that the payments should be restored. Farmers need support. Brexit took their support away.”
“I welcome this debate. Such a debate has been needed for quite a long time. The reality is that for many people, the issue of the financial implications of Irish unity has been used as a put-down to try to smother or put a stop to argument and debate. This is a welcome way in which we can open that up.”
“I hope Government will reflect on that and recognise that we need to build a process. There is an energy for reunification among ordinary people the length and breadth of the country. This is about the physical constraints, but is also about identity. Many people who live on this island have a British identity.”
“As the Taoiseach is aware, for many years people with mental health issues have been attending emergency departments in our hospitals. Many of them get very poor outcomes. They experience long delays and end up on trolleys. Sometimes they are referred for short-term stays or to community services, which offer little or no service.”
“I appreciate all that and the farmers forum is a positive advancement on things, but we are back to the problem at the very core of this issue, which is that the chair of Bord Bia has been using imported beef from Brazil as part of his mix to sell product.”
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“It is totally at the Government's door that it does not ensure mental health services are in place to protect people - not just the unfortunate service user, but others who may face fatal consequences if this is not done.”
“The absence of follow-up in mental health services to acute situations like this can have tragic outcomes for any member of the public as well as for the service user, yet the Government is stonewalling this family and stopping us finding out the truth. This situation is similar to many others around the country. Across the water in Britain, there was a case where three people were killed and a report was done into it. The Government over there conducted an immediate, full and thorough investigation into it to find what lessons could be learned. Why are we not doing that here? Why are we allowing this to continually happen?”
“It was not carried out, we are told. We understand it was started but stopped. My colleague has mentioned people who break a leg or get a heart attack. Of course, services are there for those people. If the service is not there, that particular person can suffer huge consequences. If the service is not properly there when a person with a mental health condition contacts mental health services and goes into the system, that can have a tragic outcome. Suicide is often at the end of that route. In some of these cases, and in this family's case, it was not suicide; it was an innocent member of the public that suffered. This is not the only such case. There are others. People have come to me and we see other cases unfolding all the time.”
“I have a copy of a letter the Minister of State sent to Michael Loughlin, the father of the young man who was killed, on 25 July. The letter stated a review was in the final stages and a draft would be received in the coming weeks. It stated that once the report was finalised, the HSE had confirmed to the Minister of State that it would contact the Loughlin family to discuss the findings and recommendations. The Minister of State also promised that her office would be in touch with the HSE and would discuss those findings and recommendations with the family when this happened. We are now in the middle of October and we have not seen this review. After the tragic event it went through, the family sought and expected a full review. A serious incident report is something that, statutorily, is normally carried out.”
“I commend everybody who works in mental health services across the country. Many people's first port of call is their GP. The GP is the rock they can cling to and sometimes the only access they have to someone who will help them. In her opening statement, the Minister of State said this year's theme was “Access to Services – Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies”. I was quite taken by that because of an issue I have raised with the Minister of State before and want to raise again. A young man from Sligo, Jimmy Loughlin, was unfortunately murdered in February 2018 by a mental health service user. This issue has gone on for some time and his family wrote to the Minister of State on 11 August. The family also wrote to other members of the Government and to the CEO of the HSE but has not got a response yet to that particular letter.”
“Yet, they have not got the money back. Tillage farmers in this sector have been let down as well. The Minister said he would bring in a package for them. They were before us last week. We expected to see something in the budget but there is no sign of anything. It is the same thing in so many sectors.”
“I want to find out something from him, as it is not clear. He mentioned additional money, which I want to try to get to the core of. On the new applicants who are in this scheme, will there be more new applicants coming into it or will he give more money to existing applicants? There is €1.5 billion over five years. Has that increased? Is the same money over five years? If it is the same money over five years, then this is not new money. It is just money moving around. That is one of the issues we have to get clear answers on. It is an insult to suggest to farmers they are being given more money because they entered the scheme, when many of them are still awaiting payment from 2022 and 2023. No farmer has been paid for the non-productive investments they applied for over two years, which they have completed and paid the money out for.”
“If we are to go on precedent, we expect it to be the same again. One of the big complaints farmers have is the valuation they are receiving for reactor cattle, which is too low and does not represent the current market value of cattle. I will give an example. James from Sligo sent me a handwritten note only the other day. In May 2025, he lost seven cattle that were valued at 2023 prices. That is the big problem he has. When he goes out to buy like for like to replace those cattle, he is down €6,000 when he goes to the mart to buy the like of those cattle again. That is a major problem we have here. Farmers need to get the current market value for their reactors in order to replace them in their herd. The Minister talked about increasing the ACRES programme and €25 million extra in 2026.”
“The TB programme has gone over budget every year since 2020 and it will run over budget again this year. In 2024, over €100 million was spent and estimates are that it could be up to €130 million. We all know that, yet when we ask the Department of public expenditure and reform - our office put in a question to it - about the eradication programme the Minister has now proposed to bring forward, we are told it will cost up to €181.7 million, yet the budget falls well short of that.”
“For many people living across the length and breadth of the country, this budget has been quite disappointing. It is a disappointment for workers that they see no tax relief whatsoever, except for a very elite few who happen to be building apartments in Dublin that nobody can afford. They seem to be the only people who have been looked after from a taxation point of view. The agricultural sector and farmers in general are also very disappointed. The Minister will probably be aware of that from media reports from the various farm organisations that expressed their disappointment. The TB eradication programme obviously needs to be funded. There have been decades when it has not been funded properly. We see a situation where the bovine TB numbers have been out of control for the past number of years.”
“I do not think so and nobody thinks so. The Government should abolish the means test for carer's allowance and increase the payment as an absolute priority.”
“Yet, these family carers have to struggle from week to week because the Government refuses to recognise the work they do and pay them for the vital service they provide. There are many people providing care for loved ones who are not receiving any payment, and they are doing this work seven days a week with no respite or no possibility of respite. If they have accumulated money or assets over the years that puts them outside the threshold for the means test, they simply get nothing. When they look at what they should be entitled to, the Government's answer to them is: "You are doing a great job, providing great care and saving the State millions but we are not going to give you anything. You should spend your own money. You should sell your assets and live off it." What is that? Is that respect for carers?”
“First, I commend the Social Democrats on bringing forward this motion. Family carers are a vital part of the health service in this country and they are not recognised or respected for the work they do. We all know from experience that the healthcare service provided by the HSE is in crisis. The home care service across the country cannot get staff and we are in a situation where thousands of people have been allocated home care hours by the HSE but they are not receiving it because there is simply no staff to provide the care. There is little effort being made to recruit that staff in my experience. Just imagine if we did not have the countless number of people - mainly women - who are providing the care to family, friends and neighbours. The HSE would collapse altogether.”
“Sinn Féin wants to see the development of critical infrastructure to ensure we are less reliant on imported energy from fossil fuels and to help to meet our climate targets in relation to renewable energy. Across the country, we need to ensure these things can be done in a balanced way. That is why this legislation is so important. I hope that when it is time for the Bill to get to Committee and Report Stages, the Minister and the Department will take on board sensible and proper ideas and positions put forward by the experts in the field and by the people on the committee.”
“The country needs to do these things faster at the same time as the planning process needs to be sped up. It is also important that we have robust safeguards in place to protect fair public participation and transparency and the environmental standards that we need to keep in place. Environmental standards are very important, particularly with regard to our biggest industry in this country, which is our agriculture industry. We produce an enormous amount of food. We export that food to every country around the world, particularly across the European Union, and the standards we have here are very important. It is because of them that we have the top-shelf products in many places we go. We need to ensure we hold those standards. It is vital that happens.”
“I understand that when it comes to the committee etc., there will be work done there and other members will have an input into it. I hope we will get in experts who will also have an input into it. Unfortunately, however, having been here a while, my experience has been that very often committees can come up with very sensible recommendations but Ministers and those around them seldom listen to very sensible recommendations and just bull ahead with what they were going to do in the first place. We certainly hope that is not the situation with regard to this legislation. Parts of the Bill are very vague, such as partial licensing and emergency licensing, which could be open to abuse in order to fast-track projects without proper environmental scrutiny.”
“We also need to ensure that we have sufficient time for public engagement, that the whole process is transparent and that we know where we stand at the end of the day. We do not want a situation where we take a problem and turn it on its head and it becomes a free-for-all. That cannot happen either, so we have to have a level of balance brought into all this. That is critical to it. When it comes to environmental impact assessment exemptions, we need to know what those exemptions are, what an exemption means and what the definition of that is. We also need to understand, where these decisions are going to be made, what is exceptional and what is not exceptional and what the definition of that is. All those things need to be teased out in a practical way.”
“One of the key aspects of the cost of living is the cost of energy, not just for the householder or the small business or whatever in the electricity they have to purchase, but also for the cost of the food and everything else they get because the energy inputs into all those products have gone up and up and continue to go up. The aim of this Bill is to speed up the EPA licences with statutory timelines of 26 and 52 weeks. This is obviously a welcome change to the current position, where people can wait up to two years. We welcome that and we see that there has to be development, much more speed and much more urgency put into this. There are concerns, however, with such transparency and public consultation around all this, that we need to see the process sped up.”
“I suggest that is not going to happen because of the Government's ineptitude and failure to meet its obligations. As regards servicing these turbines, even when they are put offshore, we will have issues in respect of our ports and their ability to provide the services when we do get that far. We have huge problems in respect of our infrastructure. We are reliant on importing energy as the Government fails to develop our own energy independence. This has resulted in Ireland's consumers paying the highest energy prices in the European Union. With every report we see, we talk about the cost of living.”
“When it comes to renewing those licences, if there are small expansions involved there are huge problems. I think the Minister acknowledged that in his speech earlier. We have targets for renewable energy across the country and we are well behind on all those targets. That is partly due to delays in granting EPA licences but also due to Government mismanagement for years with regard to how we will roll out the critical infrastructure we need. The reality is that we have a target of 80% renewable energy by 2030 and we are currently nowhere near that. I do not think anyone looking at it could possibly expect that we will ever reach it, in light of the way it is happening at the moment. We need offshore and onshore wind turbine projects started if we are going to reach these targets.”
“It is clear that our current environmental standards are not fit for purpose. The Environmental Protection Agency Act 1992 is simply not fit for purpose when it comes to granting licences, amending licences and a whole range of work that needs to be done in that respect. It is causing huge delays in building our infrastructure to meet our energy needs and expansion of businesses, the expansion of our housing and so on. We have huge problems, with delay after delay. Many of these delays are because of the high level of bureaucracy in all aspects of the engagement people have with the State, but particularly when it comes to licences relating to the EPA and environmental standards. Intensive agriculture, such as poultry and pig production, requires EPA licences as well.”
“That is why we need an energy credit for all households in the upcoming budget. This country is still in a cost-of-living crisis and providing an energy credit will go some way at least to alleviating many of these costs for households, and indeed for many businesses out there that are also crippled by the high energy costs.”
“The permanent fixes have not been done. People who work in the ESB tell me it is only a matter of time before the next storm comes and there are more outages because only temporary fixes were put in place. The Government has failed to invest in the network to be resilient from storms. Families are paying exorbitant amounts for electricity, and particularly in rural areas, they are going for extended periods without service, as they did during Storm Éowyn, and receive no compensation for the lack of service. The Government has ruled out energy credits which will cause energy and fuel poverty for many households. We need to see an increase in the fuel allowance and household benefits packages to take into account these increases in energy costs. Many working families earn a decent wage but are struggling to pay energy bills.”
“Electricity and energy costs are crippling families across the country. We have seen almost all energy companies announce price increases in recent weeks and we know these companies are amassing massive profits year on year. There are already thousands of families behind on their electricity and energy bills. I know this debt will grow in my constituency for these families while the Government turns its back on them to protect the profits of the massive energy companies. We saw the devastation caused to the electricity network last January when Storm Éowyn hit the country. My constituency of Sligo, Leitrim and south Donegal was particularly badly hit. We know people and families who went without heat for weeks on end, some for 13 and 14 weeks. When the repairs were carried out, it was only on a temporary basis.”
“We have this thing of children being taxied all over the place at a very high cost to the State because the Government has not enough provision of classes for autism, particularly, in many of these schools. We also have a situation with special schools. There are special schools in many of our areas, but in County Leitrim we do not have one at all and that is a problem. Children are leaving the county to go to Roscommon, Cavan and Longford. That needs to be resolved. The solutions are there for the problem with school transport, yet the Government, for whatever reason, seems to not want to implement its own report. We can come here and discuss all this annually and come back to the same problem, but we need action and that action will require a small piece of investment compared with the big problem we have got.”
“If those recommendations were implemented, we would go a considerable distance towards resolving many of these problems, yet the Government continues to sit on its hands and not implement the very recommendations of a report it commissioned. That is one of the key problems we have here. We also have the serious issue of parents trying to get to special classes in schools. The Minister of State is well aware of it. They are crisscrossing the country, over and back. A child from one parish cannot get into the special class in his or her school because it is full and the child then has to go ten, 15, 20 or maybe 30 miles away to get a class. The following year, a child from the parish the first child is going to now has a space opened up in the other one.”
“The issue of school transport is an annual upheaval we have across the country. As long as I have been here, this problem has come up every September. There is a particular route somewhere that was perfect last year and now it has changed because there are two fewer children on it and the bus has been withdrawn completely, or there is some other place where people thought they had enough children to get on the bus and did not. We have situations where we have people who have concessionary tickets. I have a situation where there are three children on concessionary tickets. One of them got a ticket on the bus, but how are the other two going to get to school? There are all sorts of craziness surrounding all this. In fairness, a review was done and there are recommendations.”
“The man's body was covered in blood and there was bruising all over the body. It was a scene where everyone who was there, including the family and other people who were there, recognised he was the victim of an assault and yet there was no proper investigation carried out into it. Will the Minister meet the family and ensure there is a proper investigation into this situation?”
“As the Minister is aware, the week before last there was an "RTÉ Investigates" programme on the death of Liam Farrell, a man in Roosky, County Leitrim, who was found dead on his back door in January 2020. The situation the programme exposed was a very lacklustre investigation by An Garda Síochána. Anyone who saw it - I am sure the Minister did and I know he is aware of the case - was shocked as to what had transpired. The family, Liam Farrell's son and his wife, are here today and they are looking to have a meeting with the Minister in respect of this. They are looking for a proper investigation into what happened. The investigation the Garda carried out was completely inadequate. Liam Farrell did not get a proper post mortem. There was no forensic post mortem. The scene of the crime was not sealed off properly; it was compromised.”
“I support the Bill and I understand why what is proposed is being done. More can be done in this area. We need to do more to build the resistance and capacity of these communities to deal with what is happening. To do that, we need to have more resources in place. There needs to be a greater emphasis on putting youth facilities and addiction facilities in place. It is very important to recognise that this legislation does not stand alone and that there is a need for much more support around it.”
“One of those things it could do in that regard would be to go after the people at a slightly lower level in the food chain, ensuring that there is a mechanism to attack them and their lifestyle in order that it does not become something that is attractive to younger people. Unfortunately, in many communities, very young children are being used by some of these criminal gangs, particularly for running drugs and that sort of thing. That is not just in inner-city areas; it is in every town in the country. The habit of criminality developed at a young age takes a long time to break. If those to whom I refer end up in prison as youngsters, they go on to a life of crime that has no future for them or their communities. The motivation we must all have is to ensure we have adequate legislation in place to deal with this matter.”
“In these communities, 80%, 90% or 95% of people are decent, hard-working, ordinary individuals who want to get on with their lives and to build and live in a decent society. However, the small minority of individuals to whom I refer continue to cause huge difficulties in that regard. A report into that by Dr. Johnny Connolly a couple of years ago provided a very good assessment of the situation. One of the things to come out of the report was there had to be something done to ensure younger people are not attracted to the lifestyle being put on show by these criminals, who are not bashful about how they live their lives. Being able to attack their assets and take them down is very important. The Criminal Assets Bureau has done great work and could do much more.”
“I commend the gardaí on the investigation into that case and the outcome of it but it still does not undo the loss to the family, friends and community. It is the same thing in many areas where people are in fear of crime, yet we live in a relatively safe society and that is important to recognise. It is a tiny minority of people who engage in these actions and activities. The Criminal Assets Bureau was a game-changer when it came to dismantling criminal gangs, particularly in the drugs industry. The work around that by the State and its agencies has to be commended - not just the Garda, but others as well. It is important to recognise that even in communities, like many of those in inner-city Dublin, where there are serious problems with high levels of criminality and drug addiction, it is a small minority of people who are involved.”
“The issue of crime is something that is feared as much as anything else across many parts of rural Ireland in particular and in my constituency. We saw today that three people have pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the desperate attack on Tom Niland, an elderly man living alone in a rural area who was set upon, badly beaten and subsequently passed away. The fear that kind of situation instils in people in rural communities is terrifying. It is important to recognise that for elderly people in rural, isolated areas and other areas, the fear of being set upon like that is a real terror in their lives, particularly if they live alone. It is important we have legislation which deals adequately with people who would carry out such attacks.”
“The family feels they are being stonewalled in respect of this situation. They want this issue resolved. After the recess, will the Government meet these families and sit down and discuss this issue with them? Will it ensure that, in all these circumstances, serious incident reports are carried out? This will allow people to understand where the failings occurred. In these cases people were murdered by somebody with mental health problems who attacked them. In most cases the people themselves end up dying by suicide. It is a tragedy for these families. It is the impact of a failed mental health service that we need to get right. Will the Tánaiste please ensure he meets these families and that serious incident reports are carried out in all of these cases?”
“I raise the issue of serious problems in our mental health services, particularly in acute mental health services. I will raise the individual case of a young man in Sligo who was murdered. His name was Jimmy Loughlin. The person who committed the murder was somebody in the care of the mental health services. When incidents like this happen the HSE is meant to carry out what is known as a serious incident report. It was not carried out in this case. It has also not been carried out in other cases, as another family has contacted me in similar circumstances. I raised this issue previously with the Taoiseach, who said the Mental Health Commission would have to investigate it. The family wrote to the Mental Health Commission, which has come back and said it does not investigate these situations.”
“The whole scope of this needs to go right to the core of that and recognise that many of the people who have been so damaged by all of this may not have the capacity to come forward in the same way as others. That is something that needs to be acknowledged. That is why it is so important this exercise goes to the very core of it and that everybody gets an opportunity not just to tell their story but to ensure their story is heard. These people have been the victims of terrible childhood trauma, which has had a lifelong impact on their lives. It is a positive step but the issue of redress and a whole lot of other issues need to be looked at here. I urge the Government to take this very seriously and move it forward with haste.”
“That the investigation does not look at physical abuse is something that needs to be urgently re-examined. It was interesting that the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, spoke about special schools and particularly vulnerable children. He spoke about when he was in school way back in the sixties. Obviously, there were children who were from a very poor background and the abuser would always pick on the children he felt were more vulnerable or whose families would not have the capacity to stand up if they went home and told, whereas other families might have. The abusers were able to work that out. That has been one of the elements of all of this. Very often we find the abuser picked out on whom they would carry out their abuse and picked where they would carry it out.”
“This is a positive step and a step in the right direction after many years of waiting. Like most public representatives, over the years I too have met and spoken with people from my constituency and other places who have been the victim of sexual abuse in schools. Sometimes it was an institution and sometimes it was not. The one thing that certainly strikes me is that the two were not separate. Sexual abuse and violent physical abuse were always together and that is something that needs to be taken into account here. The primary thing I see at the core of all this was power. It was about the person, the abuser, being in control and in power, and instilling fear not just into the person they were abusing but into everybody in the environment, so that it would remain a secret. That is something that needs to be acknowledged.”
“The reason we have a problem is that Government has not taken action to ensure we have services in place to enable us to build houses and finance in place so the builders can get the money to build.”
“The problem we have with financing all aspects of our housing is that the banks are not lending to the builders. That is the problem. An ordinary builder cannot go to a bank and get money to build ten, 50 or 100 houses. They simply cannot get it. They have to go to these other funds, which lend at exorbitant rates. They cannot possibly hope to be able to fund that. That is putting a stranglehold on houses being built. It is pushing up prices because it is removing any competition between the builders and developers and huge interest rates are being charged on the money. The legislation on JRs and so on is fair enough. We accept there has to be a brake put on that at times. However, to suggest it is the reason we have a problem is totally false.”
“Builders, people on the ground and even people in the local authorities will all say the same thing. In many cases the problems they have are with services. There are an awful lot of plots of land around the country where they want to build houses. There are towns in my constituency where we could build houses and where the local authority owns land and could build local authority houses, but cannot do so because Uisce Éireann has not got the services up to scratch. There are no sewerage or water systems available in those areas. It is the same across the State. We also have an issue with financing. The recent announcement that we are going to see a reduction in size of the already very small and cramped apartments across the State to somehow or other make them cheaper is a hugely retrograde step.”
“The amending legislation being introduced this evening is quite ironic in that it is amending legislation that has not yet been commenced. This is one of the key Opposition criticisms. We spent many months last year on planning and development legislation. It was the biggest Bill ever to come before the House and here we are back again amending it. The biggest issue I have with the Bill before us is the narrative it portrays, namely that the housing problem across the country is because of planning permission issues and people objecting. These are not the reasons we have a problem with housing across the country. That narrative lets Government off the hook and Government conveniently continues to grab onto it as being the reason for the problems.”
“The problem we have at the moment is that farmers do not have confidence in it. They see feedlots and other things that are hit-and-miss in how well they are run and they have difficulty understanding why all the emphasis has once again been put on the farmers who find themselves in a situation where TB has spread to their farms, often through wildlife. They are the ones who feel they are being punished for it. We need clarity and we need to ensure the budget is there to ensure people can have confidence in this new scheme.”
“I appreciate all of that. To give credit where it is due, something is being done. A crisis has been allowed to evolve over the years. What we need this morning, if we can get it, is a commitment as to when this is going to happen and clarity on those issues I raised regarding the difficulties farmers going to the market are going to have and so on. We need to see that clarity. We also need to see where the budget for this is going to come from. From a departmental point of view, it will obviously cost more to bring in these new rules and regulations and implement them properly. If they are only half-heartedly implemented, they will not work. All of us, including the Minister, understand that. That will require more resources but it will put farmers in a position where they can have confidence in the scheme.”
“We need to understand whether there will be some way of mitigating those disadvantages for farmers. Clarity also needs to be brought to the rates of compensation farmers are going to get under this new regime so that we know exactly where we stand. On the control of animals at high risk, we understand that there are going to be restrictions and further testing. In effect, it will probably be three years after a clear test that farmers will be back to normal. I would like clarity as to where we stand as regards all of that.”
“To get to the issues that are of most concern to many people in the agricultural community, one of the issues farmers are concerned about is the proposal that a sign be put up at marts where there is a reactor in a herd. This would be there for quite a long time and would restrict farmers in getting a decent price for their animals. That is an issue that needs to be dealt with very sensitively. We do not want farmers to be at a disadvantage because they have had the misfortune of having TB in their herds, something which, in most cases, is not their fault. That needs to be dealt with. One of the other issues is the restrictions as to where and to whom farmers can sell their cattle. In many cases, the only option they will have is to sell to the finishing lots or the factories. This restricts the market, which will be bad for farmers.”
“I raise with the Minister the situation as regards TB, which is at crisis point across the country. I know the TB forum has set out a number of measures that have yet to be enacted. I would like to get an update on when these are going to happen. Many of these actions are difficult for farmers. When they have a reactor or their farm is locked down as a result of TB, the last thing they need is a more difficult and strenuous situation that will cause them an even greater loss. We need clarity on many of these issues because farmers are very distressed at the prospect of having to enter into a new situation where they will be further disadvantaged by losses related to TB.”
“Shannon Airport has been mentioned by some of our colleagues. Clearly, a rail line to Shannon Airport needs to be a priority but so too does a line to Dublin Airport. The metro line has been baked in the oven for a long time. An awful lot of money has been expended so far but nothing has been built. Alternatives need to be looked at. A DART service to Dublin Airport could be done from the north line. This needs to be done much faster. That is not to say that the metro should not proceed. It certainly should because our capital city needs proper transport infrastructure and an underground put in place. There is a lot of work to be done. The rail review has put a template in place but it does not go far enough, particularly when we look at the space left vacant in the north west.”
“Jim Meade and the people in Iarnród Éireann are working towards greater frequency and better planning in respect of all of that but that will require investment. I hope the Government will see the dividend that would pay. Investment is not spending money but investing it for a return that will have a multiplier effect for the regions in which it is invested and for the economy and ecology of the country. That needs to be made very clear. In many parts of the country, including Mullingar and Athlone, additional train tracks and more double-tracking are needed. We need greater frequency of train services, which can only be done with investment in double-tracking. With regard to the key airports, one of the strange things about this island is that our airports do not connect to rail.”