Former Deputies John Deasy, Paudie Coffey, Pat Deering, Phil Hogan, Liam Twomey and Michael D'Arcy and Deputies Paul Kehoe and John Paul Phelan all are or have been Fine Gael TDs from the south east. All have either fallen or are on the precipice. Fine Gael, remarkably, won 50% of the 14 seats in the 2011 general election in the south east of Ireland. Once this Dáil has been dissolved, all these people will have left national politics. It is an incredible reflection, actually an indictment, of Fine Gael's decade in power that these candidates either were not returned or chose not to face the electorate. The south east is not remarkable. The north west and the midlands are also walking away from the traditional parties of government. People are basically being forced to seek out new homes because of their political anger.

The Minister will be familiar with the movie "The Hunger Games", a possible characterisation of Boris Johnson's levelling-up strategy. An insanely out of touch capital acts as a parasite on the rest of the country. Provinces are divided and conquered. When you look at what is getting done in the national development plan, it is somewhat instructive. This year, we will spend €13 billion on publicly funded capital projects and it is projected that by the end of this decade, we will have spent €165 billion. The south east has 8.9% of the population but in the past decade has received less than 1% of all major capital spending. The region has turned away from Fine Gael because the educated view is that Fine Gael is not living up to its promises. According to the first iteration of the Department of public expenditure's capital tracker, Dublin, with 29% of the population, is drinking in 65% of the spending on major projects. In the second iteration it was 56%. For all the talk about spending codes and business plans, when big projects hit Cabinet, it is to Dublin and Cork they go and the rest of the country can wait. All of this is before the absolutely ludicrous price tag of metro north or the finalisation of the children's hospital bill. As a country, we apparently just have to close our eyes and cough up billions. In 2011, Fine Gael's promise to deliver a full national university to Waterford, similar to Maynooth or UL, was erased, with WIT left to starve for a decade and then forced into a complicated and underfunded merger. The new technological university, TU, has no new courses, no new academic disciplines, no ability to borrow and no capital projects awarded. Every TU is now contracting against a growing university sector. What happened to Fine Gael's promises to the south east? In 2013, it similarly promised that being part of the Cork-led buyer hospital grouping would not be to the disadvantage of University Hospital Waterford.

This has resulted in that hospital getting fewer resources than every other model 4 hospital in the country. Can the Minister tell me what the new messages from Fine Gael to the people of Waterford and the south east are and why anyone should believe them?

Given the Deputy's great interest in Fine Gael representation, I am pleased to tell him that come the next election, I have every confidence that Senator John Cummins will get elected to the Dáil. The Deputy seems to be focused on the past. We are focused on the needs of today and are confident about the story we will be putting forward. We will be confident about the ability of someone like Senator Cummins to make our case in this regard, while other Government representatives will be doing the same.

When the Deputy stands up again, perhaps he will be able to explain the analogy of "The Hunger Games" he used. He appeared to be painting some kind of vision of some kind of aggression and competition for life in the way he described it. I do not get it, so perhaps he might explain it to us a bit more. While he is busy painting these kinds of stories and trying to explain the story he has put to me, let me tell him the kind of case that Senator Cummins and I will be making, along with other public representatives from the Government parties, to the proud people of the south east and beyond.

In the Deputy's question to me, I did not hear any reference to the fact that the number of jobs in companies supported by IDA Ireland has increased by 25%. There was no reference to this point. There are more jobs and these are better and improved ones that are making a difference to the people of the south east and beyond. In the points the Deputy was putting to me, I heard nothing about the progress being made in the North Quays development. This is a project that has been enabled by the Government and that has the ability to transform the city of Waterford and beyond it. I also did not hear in the question put to me by the Deputy an acknowledgement of the difference the national broadband plan is making to towns and villages outside our cities and the role it is playing in allowing jobs to be moved out of our large cities and to counties and towns where people can do their work nearer to home. This is benefiting everybody. In South East Technological University, SETU, it is and remains the case that the Government is fully committed to how that institution can be developed in the time ahead and how we can ensure the young women and men the Deputy is referring to have the education, higher education and university services and supports they need closer to home. This is the reality of how we are looking to make a difference to the communities the Deputy is referring to.

Turning to the point the Deputy made about our hospital services and where they stand in the south east, of course we are aware of how much more needs to be done and of the pressures our health services are facing. It still remains the case, however, that for the hospital and the people working in it, there are now more staff working there, with a bigger budget, due to the changes being made by the Government to expand the health budget and to bring more nurses and doctors into the hospitals that can make a difference to the health of the people of the south east and our country overall. This is the story of the difference we are making and the proposition we will be bringing to the people. This is the message I am sure Senator John Cummins will be communicating with great vigour and gusto in the time ahead. I say this given the Deputy's fixation on Fine Gael.

The Minister obviously did not listen to me if he said I did not listen to him. If the Minister wishes to talk about commitment to the south east, he might put on the Dáil record now if the Government is prepared to endorse the €350 million project plan issued by the SETU president. This would be something like a game-changer. Is the Minister prepared to announce the development of the engineering building, which was first promised in 2009?

It is out to tender.

It is still sitting in a public private partnership, which has still not been approved. Perhaps the Minister might approve that. Perhaps he might like to go down to the hospital and explain why it was cut out of the €650 million in capital funding given to the other eight model 4 hospitals last year. Perhaps he might answer the question of why in a decade that hospital received just one third of all the capital funding given to each of the other eight model 4 hospitals. The Minister can shake his head and think he has heard all this before, but he has not. I can promise him that his colleague in the constituency will be hearing about this when he stands on the doorsteps. People in Waterford and the south east are growing tired. After all the talk in this House of trying to improve cardiac services, we still do not even have a seven-day emergency heart attack service in University Hospital Waterford. This is the only region in the country without such a service. To be frank, this is what it looks like to me and I did not hear anything in his response to change this view.

I responded to all the different points the Deputy made. Every point he put to me regarding investment in different parts of the south east I responded to. I outlined what the Government is doing.

The Government did not do much for SETU.

I responded to his question. I laid out what we are doing. I remind the Deputy that it does not stop him from turning up to all the different announcements made by Government. He is there.

I have to be there to make sure they are announced.

He is eager enough to get into the photo and to take the credit for all the progress the Government is making-----

They are easy to count.

-----while of course we know, we need to do more. In 2019, the budget for University Hospital Waterford stood at €201 million. It increased to €268 million, an increase of one third in four years, meaning that 2,758 people are now working in University Hospital Waterford, an increase of 809 since December 2019. I have little doubt that when all of these measures were being announced the Deputy was there standing beside a Government representative looking to take credit for it as well.

With respect, I am not taking credit. I pointed out to the Minister that it was the least funded and it remains the least funded.

I answered Deputy Shanahan and he was too busy with his Hunger Games. I am outlining the difference that has been made and what has happened. It is also the case that other measures the Government was committed to have happened. St. Declan's Way, the development at Cappoquin, the work that has happened at Mount Congreve are only just a few of the examples of the commitment of Government to make a difference for the south east-----

Those are walkways, not roads.

-----just as we have a commitment to make a difference to every other part of the country.