Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This plan will be measured by its impact on the people who live and work in rural Ireland. That will be the measure of its success. We will be developing indicators to measure the impacts and there is a monitoring committee set up, which will meet shortly. There are 276 actions in this plan. We will monitor them and the people in Departments and the Ministers who make promises will be held to account. The Deputy referred to Turas Nua and the document states clearly that it aims to "maintain the provision of schemes such as the rural social scheme, community employment, back to education allowance and tús in rural communities and the Gaeltacht having regard to the declining numbers on the live register and the need to ensure that these schemes are targeted to the needs of jobseekers and others". The people who are responsible for that are in the Department of Social Protection and they will be held to account. People have made commitments in this plan and they have to deliver. My job is to sit down and chair the monitoring committee, bring in the relevant stakeholders in the Departments and find out if it is happening. The Deputy mentioned Pat Spillane. He has come on board and I am delighted that he has agreed to become a rural ambassador. He is going to go out and he is going to listen to communities and if there is a problem he will be back telling me and he will be rapping on my door to say what is not happening. I know that the members here will know if it is not happening. This is a living document. If things are not happening come and tell us about it because the actions are here. There are 276 of them. What we want to do is change the narrative about rural Ireland. I know there are challenges, I absolutely accept that but we want to show that rural Ireland is modern, it is dynamic and it is creative and it makes a huge contribution to our economy.

On jobs, positive figures were published yesterday that showed unemployment down to 6.6%, down from over 15% in 2012. There is a target to create 135,000 jobs in rural Ireland. In 2016, 72% of jobs were created outside of the greater Dublin area. It is about getting the message out that you have got to go to rural Ireland, give them an opportunity. There is loads out there and there are committed and hard working people. There is energy and enthusiasm in rural Ireland that one will never get anywhere else so why not get out there? The word to the IDA is that we will increase foreign direct investment by 40% in the regions. The focus has to be on rural Ireland. That is my job. I have said on numerous occasions that I want all Departments to positively discriminate towards rural Ireland. Think rural. There are job increases in all the regions. These are full-time, high quality jobs. What we have here is a broader-based recovery. Employment is growing in every single sector. It is happening in rural Ireland but we want that to continue and we want a bigger focus there. We know that 135,000 jobs are to be created in rural Ireland over the lifetime of this plan.

On broadband, more than 1.4 million premises in Ireland have access to broadband because of the policy delivered by this Government and the last. Towns all over Ireland now have access to high speed broadband and the telecoms sector continues to invest with more and more services to be rolled out. The challenge now is to push that investment into rural areas beyond the towns because a lot of the towns have got broadband. To update Deputy Collins on the Cork figure, 155,000 properties have access to high speed broadband in Cork. Another 2,300 properties will be coming on stream in the next couple of weeks. Work is happening on broadband and it continues all the time but we have to keep the focus there. Members will know about the national broadband plan and that it is for every single house. We are actually being watched by the rest of Europe because this is the first plan of its kind to put high speed broadband into every single house in Ireland. That is ambitious and something that we need. It is going to be good news for rural Ireland and Ireland generally when that is delivered.