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

We have benefited a lot from the witnesses' attendance here today. As Ms Anne Fitzgerald mentioned, the request for multi-annual community support and funding is vital. The witnesses explained that it is no bother to get projects going or to get the building up but the issue is sustaining the service. We have learned from this meeting today and we will have to fight for funding to ensure that all the work that has been brought to this stage will be kept going.

Mr Jerh O'Donoghue and his family have given of their time, as have Mr. Michael O'Mahony, Ms Samantha O'Shea and Ms Anne Fitzgerald. However, a day will come when they will be too busy or doing something else but the service will still be needed. We need to impress on the Ministers and the Taoiseach of the day that funding will have to be provided. Whatever about their ideas about what they are going to do, we must retain what we have. We need to ensure we hold what the witnesses have obtained for us with all their sweat and blood going back over the years. We need to ensure it is preserved and that we keep providing the service. As long as children are being born and tomorrow comes again, the service will need to be continued. I have got the message from all the witnesses here today. We will have to fight tooth and nail to ensure their services are protected into the future and funding will have to be provided.

I am glad Ms Denvir raised the issue of planning. While the witnesses were waiting outside, I raised the matter of planning. This issue is close to my heart. My father before me and I, since I was elected to Kerry County Council, fought tooth and nail to ensure that a young fellow or a young girl got planning permission. It is only a small thing when one considers all the racket, all the talk about social housing and all that is going on because hardly any houses are being built anywhere. It is hard to believe that we cannot give permission to someone in their own place to build a house to put a roof over their heads. We have two situations obtaining now in County Kerry that are preventing youngsters from getting planning. They have the money to build the houses themselves. A mother of one of them was on to me again today asking what is happening. We are stuck in a kind of limbo because they say that the national strategy and planning guidelines do not allow Kerry County Council to grant permission. If I am worth my salt up here, I must at least fight to have those policies changed to allow the young fellow or the young girl to build in his or her own place.

I know too many valleys where the lights have gone out and the elderly people have passed on. There is a lot of talk about keeping the scenery but, if there is not a light in the window or a house in the glen, we have nothing because we are gone dead then. It is left to the briars, bushes and badgers and all the different species. I always say people before anything else. If we look back at those who came before us, they protected the area they lived in, minded it and handed it down to us. The powers that be should depend on the locals, whether it is the farmer or another who owns the land, to look after the land and hand it down to theirs. That is what we did ever and we make no apologies for doing it.

We have learned a lesson from the witnesses today. We are very glad of all the work they have done. To ensure their work continues, we must fight for multi-annual funding for such groups. I thank them very much for coming here. They are very busy people but we have learned quite a lot from them. I know the other members appreciate, as do I, what they have told us.