Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 26 October 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs

Sustaining Viable Rural Communities: Discussion (Resumed)

2:15 pm

Photo of Danny Healy-RaeDanny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A very important thing is the road to the farmer's door. We were promised local improvement schemes, which were suspended in 2011, but there was no mention of them in the budget as much as I, other Members and local authority members throughout the country have fought. The people in rural Ireland are entitled to a good road to their door. The last half mile to their door is as important as the road to the door of the people in Dublin 4 and we do not begrudge anyone anything. This came from the Department of Finance. It tried to bring about this change to stop the taxpayer for paying for what it calls private roads. In many instances they are public roads going to many houses. These people are entitled to them. They pay car tax and every kind of tax, including property tax, but they see very little for it.

It is the same with regard to the emergency hardship scheme. In the case of an old farmer or his wife, the doctors or home help cannot get up or down the road. We used to have a good scheme which was the emergency hardship scheme. There is no funding for it now. Everyone here knows there is no maintenance money for draining county roads and there is no money for surfacing county roads. These people pay their tax as well as anyone else. It is galling to think work never stops on motorways but no work is carried out on the local roads because there is no funding for it.

Hedges were mentioned. I have been raising this issue for as long as I was a member of Kerry County Council. They tried to take my seat off me the first year I mentioned it because they said I was trying to get the local authority to cut the hedges so that I would get the job myself. Nothing could be further from the truth. School buses cannot go up or down roads. A load of hay cannot go up to any farmer's yard now because the roads are closed in. Something has to be done to open up the roads and let the people travel.

The rivers are all clogged. Something must be done. I put the whole blame on Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI. It will not let a farmer go near a river or waterway. The trees are crossing the rivers and there are big mounds of silt and gravel where the farmers always knew where to take it out without doing any harm to the river. The IFI threatens the farmers or whoever that if they do not get out of its way it will get the gardaí to remove them and they will have to bring back all the stuff. It is ridiculous. We must let the water flow. Roads are blocked, houses are flooded and in one instance in Glenflesk the whole place gets flooded. The emergency services cannot get up or down the national primary road there. There are 22 houses in the community and they are all flooded. We have nothing to bring in this year because the IFI is holding up the entire thing. I call for the IFI to be brought to task somehow by a Minister to make it realise this. The sad thing about it-----

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