I thank the fishing organisations for the peaceful protest in Cork yesterday. I was disappointed to think we have two senior Ministers, Deputies Coveney and McGrath, and our Taoiseach, who I found out afterwards was canvassing around Dublin Bay North, did not bother to meet with the peaceful protesters in Dublin. No Fine Gael politician turned up, which is a disappointment, but remember, when the election comes, they will be knocking on their doors.

Today, I must speak about last Monday. Councillors in Cork county were handed a comprehensive independent report compiled by the All-Island Research Observatory at Maynooth University, which has vindicated every word from my mouth since my election to this House in 2016. Cork county has been getting the lowest funding from the State of any county in this country. Many of the councillors who read this report already knew the perilous funding situation coming from Government, but one Fine Gael councillor had the cheek to try to insult us, as Deputies, by telling us to get off our butts and get the funding to Cork county, even though it is his party that has been in Government with Fianna Fáil for decades and has stood over this national scandal.

This damning report of successive Government failures states that we have the lowest CLÁR funding per capita, this being funding for disadvantaged areas, despite having the highest CLÁR population. The report also states that Cork county has the fourth lowest LEADER funding allocation in the State, despite being one of the largest counties. The report goes on to state that Cork county has continually ended up with the lowest share of grants in the State, with massive short falls in rural regeneration funds, village renewal funds, local improvement scheme funding and greenway funding. The report states that the roads in Cork county will take 52 years – remember that Tánaiste – to bring them up to standard. It states we need €750 million to catch up with the rest of the country.

West Cork roads are appalling. Roads in Bandon, Dunmanway, Bantry and Skibbereen are a danger to anyone who travels on them by car and people are incensed. Bypasses in Innishannon, the completion of the southern bypass in Bandon, the new northern bypass in Bandon and bypasses in Bantry all lay idle as no money is being allocated in spite of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil politicians making announcements, year in, year out, for decades, of funding becoming available. The people of Cork county are paying more taxes than any of our county counterparts. We have the highest motor tax and the highest carbon tax rate than any other county. Simply put, the people of Cork county are paying to make sure that the rest of the country’s infrastructure is being put in place.

When I raised the lack of funding getting into Cork county with the Taoiseach a number of months ago, I asked him to set up a task force for west Cork to see whether a task force could even the playing pitch; the Taoiseach refused. What was the Taoiseach hiding? Why did he not want this task force? Was he afraid it would end up with a report like the one we have now? Is Micheál Martin scared of the truth and the proof of the Government's neglect of west Cork? Today, I ask the Tánaiste, why is Cork county being treated appalling by successive Governments in relation to funds for our county. Will the Tánaiste accept this damning independent report of underfunding by successive Governments and its findings and what action will he take to rectify this shocking wrongdoing?

I am afraid I have not seen the report and I was not notified that Deputy Collins was going to raise it. Therefore, it is difficult for me to comment on it but I will take a look at it in the coming days. I wonder whether it is a comparison of all the local authorities in Ireland because it is the case that quite a number of Dublin local authorities do not receive much in Government grants. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is an obvious one and my county council in Fingal has received very little, almost nothing, in Government grants for road maintenance, for example, for a particular reason. That is because wealthier local authorities receive less funding than less well-off local authorities, for example, those in the west and very rural local authorities.

If one looks at the way local authorities are funded, they get their funding from a number of sources. There are grants from central Government. There is the local property tax, LPT, commercial rates and there are things like development levies and charges. Local authorities control three of those four streams and can raise money if they choose to through the LPT, through commercial rates, through development levies and other charges. One stream comes from central Government, so when one looks at how much money local authorities have, to suggest that it is all about how much they get in central grants from Government is to misunderstand and misrepresent the situation, because local authorities have a lot of control over how much funding they have. They set the LPT and the commercial rate and they decide on things like development levies and charges. While many authorities receive a lot of Government grants, it is the local authorities that are least well off that tend to receive the most per capita, and that is how public spending generally works in a democracy such as ours.

Let us take a closer look at the grants that have been given out over recent years. West Cork and Cork county were continually overlooked in recent years. Look at the rural regeneration funds. West Cork had a shovel-ready project which ticked all the boxes for two years, namely, the Schull Harbour development project, which could have created 100 jobs in a rural peninsula. I pleaded with the Tánaiste, when he was Taoiseach, with the then Minister, Deputy Ring, and the current Taoiseach, to get this project the funds it deserved, but not one cent came to west Cork. At the same time, three rural regeneration projects in Mayo got €6.4 million in total. The first one got €1.8 million, the next got €2.6 million and the third got €1.9 million. This and other aspirational non-shovel-ready projects got millions throughout the county, but west Cork and Cork county got zero funding. This year, west Cork put forward two great projects: the Dursey Island cable car project in Castletownbere and the Bandon public realm plan. Surely, if rural regeneration funding was in an honest capacity, we would have had funding for at least one of the two projects, but again we got zero funding.

Will the Tánaiste promise today to launch and independent inquiry as to what has gone on in Government Departments for years to allow this scandal of underfunding for Cork county? Will this independent inquiry see heads roll in Departments where wrongdoing is found out? Will he immediately support my call for setting up a task force in west Cork to try to repair the damage done for decades so that we can have, not a greater amount of funds, but equal funding? Will he read this report and act on its findings?

I will certainly look at the report, but it is very strange for any Deputy in this House to call for an independent inquiry, to state what the outcome should be and then to state what the punishment should be. That is nonsense, Deputy Collins. That is not what an independent inquiry does. An independent inquiry looks at something independently, it does not have a predetermined outcome and it certainly does not have predetermined sanctions for people. I think the Deputy is taking a very strange approach to this, if that is his view.

The rural development fund of €1 billion and the urban development fund of €2 billion are competitive funds and the projects are assessed independently and are scored, or at least that is what is supposed to happened, and the best projects get the funds. It is not divided on a per capita basis. These are national funds, and funding is supposed to go to the projects that score highest.