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

I welcome the three groups to the committee today. It is great to note their ideas up close and to examine what they are about. They are linking arms to help rural areas and I thank them sincerely for their efforts.

I am amazed at the turn-around FORUM Connemara has given the people in Connemara. We are keen to know more and get to see what the company is doing. Many areas in Kerry, where I come from, are dwindling. Young fellows are leaving in droves all along the Iveragh Peninsula. This is happening in many places, for example, Kilgarvan. We are near enough to Killarney but, now, we do not have enough for a football team for the first time. Sneem is where the great John Egan came from and Catherdaniel are other examples. They used to have two teams each. Now, they are struggling to have one team between the two areas.

The concern is what happens when young people go away. They may be going for a short time in their own minds. However, when the go to Australia or Canada, they meet partners and have children. What will they have when they come back? They have weekly wages where they are and they probably have a home – I am sure of it. It is a major thing for such people to move back.

I will offer one example. Many years ago my uncle was mad about Ireland and Kerry. He was great at farming and everything. However, he wanted to get married and have money. He went to New York. He fully intended on coming back. After the first year, he bought a site or a piece of land in Kilgarvan to which he intended to come back. However, subsequently, he started having children. He had five sons. He is still over there and there is no come-back now. He sold the ground he had. That is an example of what happens when they go away. They go away with the full intention of coming back. I am concerned that we are in a downward slide and that we will not be able to get many of them back.

It is a fact that many young people will not take over the small family farm. They can see that it would only be a burden around their necks to carry it on and to hand it down to their children in turn. There is pride in the sense that people stay in their own place and hold on to their own place. However, they can see that it would be too onerous and that there would no financial gain. It is sad to see after all the sweat, blood and tears that older farmers went through over the years to survive in their own place. It is sad that they will have no one to take it on. That is the saddest aspect of rural Ireland. We must try to put a stop to it.

Small things can become very big things, for example, planning.

We have restrictions in planning. I will give an example in Kerry where the local authority granted planning permission for four different applicants along the national secondary route. What happened? Even though Kerry County Council's engineers approved access onto the road, we found out that the National Roads Authority, NRA, was advised by the then Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in 2013 to prevent any more access onto these roads. Where is this driving these applicants? It is into a town where they cannot buy a house or site when they are trying to put a roof over their heads, which they are entitled to do.

Health and safety resonate very severely with me. We lost a lovely young farmer in our neck of the woods the week before last. He was a great friend of mine and I was to phone him the day before he died. I just could not get through to him but I will not be getting through to him anymore. It is a fact that there are savage dangers for farmers operating on their own because there is no help. Farming is purely a one-man operation. We need to do our level best to ensure, advise and help farmers.

In respect of the dangers affecting people in rural Ireland, any road can be closed in with trees and a load of hay. They say that this is where the whole thing is wrong. The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport has regulations relating to the maximum width and height of loads and vehicles, but I am sad to say that the roads are not to that capacity. If a load of hay or a high lorry is going through, that is within the regulations. What will happen is that a branch will be hit, break off, fall on the windscreen of a car driven by a mother coming home with her children from school and kill her. We need to address those issues. There are so many things.