I thank the Chair for giving me the opportunity to raise this matter on the Adjournment. Question No. 2 on today's Order Paper read:
To ask the Minister for Labour if an AnCO training centre will be built in Bantry, County Cork, and the steps already taken in preparation for this development.
Unfortunately we got the bad news that no such centre was contemplated or being developed. Despite the Taoiseach's promises during the election he has left the people of Bantry high and dry. I find it difficult to give adequate expression to the anger, deep resentment and frustration of the people of Bantry at the blunt refusal of this Government to honour their pledge which was unequivocal, unambiguous and unconditional. It is shabby, shameless and indifferent to cold shoulder the needs and aspirations of the people of Bantry in this way.
This close and well-knit community have been dealt many a blow in the past, fracturing and demoralising it in some cases, but they have always come back Phoenix-like out of the ashes. It is no exaggeration to say that hopes and expectations were high in the town that a constituency which returned two Fine Gael Deputies would not be insensitively ignored by the leader of the Coalition. A local businessman said to me on the phone this evening that the present leader could not be so destructively city-orientated and biased against the country as to by-pass the problems of a small community like Bantry. That man now knows the truth. I told him I will spend the remainder of my life in this Parliament, whether it is a week, a month, six months or the full term, insistingly and vociferously showing the falseness, the shoddiness and mean-spiritedness of the hollow vote-catching promise of Garret FitzGerald to the people of Bantry and the community of west Cork. I suppose during elections we are all tempted to make promises but I do not think any of us has undertaken the promises like Garret FitzGerald.