It is good to see the Acting Leader in the role today. I would like to further analyse and discuss budget 2025. I am particularly pleased there is a significant commitment to investing in wastewater and in upgrading wastewater systems throughout the country. This is one of the big problems in planning and building houses, particularly in rural parts of the country. We are putting through a planning Bill that will deal significantly with the judicial review delays which, in County Clare alone, have held up 290 houses in Ennis for years. It has gone before the courts although permission was granted by Clare County Council and An Bord Pleanála. The planning Bill is important and the other big issue is wastewater treatment.

I look at County Clare as a typical example of counties the length and breadth of the country. I sat in the office of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, in October or November 2020. We were promised a pilot scheme for small villages of approximately €50 million. The scheme was announced three years later and two projects in Clare were selected. So far, four years on, not one sod has been turned in either Broadford or Cooraclare. Broadford people have spent a significant amount of time and money preparing for the scheme. When the scheme is completed, houses will be built. It is similar in Cooraclare and Carrigaholt, where development is considered premature in the absence of an upgraded wastewater treatment system. Doolin in County Clare is probably one of the busiest tourist attraction areas in the country. It is from where most people travel to the Aran Islands. People are trying to build houses and hotel accommodation in Doolin but all are deemed premature simply because the wastewater treatment system is not up to standard.

Billions need to be spent on the wastewater system in this country. I welcome the fact that some of the Apple money will be dedicated to it. I would like to see a timeline. I would like to request of the Acting Leader that we have the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in the Seanad to outline his revised plans and timelines and the projects he will fund through Irish Water for 2025, 2026 and 2027. If we are to keep developing our economy in the manner in which it has developed, and if we want to meet the housing targets the Taoiseach has mentioned of 50,000 a year for the next five years, it will only happen if the infrastructure is in place. It will only happen if we have upgraded wastewater treatment facilities the country. The houses cannot just be built in urban areas. They have to be built in urban and rural areas.

I second everything Senator Conway has just said.

When the presidents of our universities speak out, we should listen. They are people who are not prone to negative hyperbole. In fact, they have the important task of putting the best foot forward when marketing their universities and colleges nationally and internationally. When the president of UCD warns the sector is at risk, the provost of Trinity College warns of a quiet and gradual decline and the chair of the governing authority of UCC says the viability of Irish universities is under threat, we should be alarmed. When we hear these concerns echoed in supportive editorials in The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner and the Business Post, we can be reassured it is more than just the usual pre-budget posturing. Looking at this year's budget, as the Irish Universities Association has observed, there is much to welcome. Those of us who remember the Cassells report and the saga since then will realise there is something monumental in the Government at long last introducing a multiannual approach to core funding, while also addressing the ludicrous situation of not fully funding our universities to cover pay inflation driven by public sector pay awards. The increase in the PhD stipend is also good news. Postgraduate study and poverty should never have to walk hand in hand. Credit where credit is due but there is a problem. The Government itself acknowledged in 2022 that the sector is underfunded by €307 million per annum in its core funding needs.

This means that between 2022 and 2029, even after Tuesday's budget, there will be a €1.3 billion shortfall in core funding for the sector. The figures announced on Tuesday are a public admission that the €307 million gap will never really be bridged. When Funding the Future was launched, we were told by the then Minister, Deputy Harris, that it would settle the question on higher education funding. It was much trumpeted and much heralded but it now seems that it would have been far more honest of him to have titled that document "Funding the distant future based on figures from the distant past". For a country that prides itself on education, we have a strange way of showing that pride. There is still hope that the yet to be announced supplementary budget will deliver the €70 million or so needed to cover unfunded pay awards. I acknowledge what has been addressed for 2025 for pay increases. However, there remains underfunding from previous years in respect of pay awards.

We should also resent that universities are being forced to justify themselves on the basis of their economic worth. President Higgins has spoken eloquently about the danger of this and the fact that it can lead to "the quiet capture of universities, overtly or covertly, by powerful elites and corporate interests". Universities are to be valued not just for their utilitarian contribution to the economy, positive that it is, but for being a cornerstone and foundation of an open, democratic and learned society. While I welcome what is positive in the budget, our universities will not be able to retire the begging bowl just yet. At a time of plenty in our public coffers, that is a real shame. I ask for a debate on this issue as soon as possible.