Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is sad that we are in such a hurry on something so crucial. Statements are often made here that are superficial. The two greatest drivers of the economy in the area where I live, which Deputy Ring would know very well, are ECC Teo, which is out in the countryside, a timber mill employing 120 directly and up to 300 indirectly and McGrath Quarries, which is also in the countryside and not in the town. Who would build a quarry in a town? When I go around the real rural Ireland that I know, I find that an awful lot of the economic drivers are actually in the countryside. Were it not for the planners insisting on trying to put industries cheek by jowl with residents, there would be even more industry in the countryside.

I have no problem with industry in the countryside and I do not understand why the planners are so against it. We have destroyed the edge of every town in Ireland with horrible industrial buildings, one on top of the other. This idea that the towns are the drivers is actually the main problem in rural Ireland if we look around. When the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, has a private chat about this, he will be able to validate this. I was going one night recently to a meeting in a place called Roundfort. It used to be in the Minister of State's constituency. Roundfort is a fantastic area. There are so many beautiful houses and people living there. However, the village itself, other than the school and the church, is fairly dead. The village is the redundant part. I was thinking about this. Why did this happen? Why are so many villages closed? If I go into Ballinrobe, I see the same thing. Why are they closed? It is because the services they used to provide to the people living in those houses in the countryside are no longer the service those people want. They go to the town if they want to get clothes. That is the scenario and those are the challenges of the small town.

If there is a redundancy and a challenge in the country, it is in the urban areas, where we see all of this decay. There are very few rural towns in Ireland, even where the countryside is alive and kicking and fantastic, that are actually as alive as they were because of the change. I will give a simple example. I was in a planning office one day recently. I asked why they wanted me to live in the village. I got the usual trite answer to the effect that I could walk to the post office. I responded that I have the services of a post office, bank and my travel agent when I use the phone in my pocket, therefore I do not need to go to the village much. I do not need to go to the town. That is why there is a problem with the towns. Even where the rural community is strengthening and growing, there is a problem with the towns because the purpose that the town served 50 or 60 years ago is dead. When I came to Corr na Móna, there were three shops there. Now there is one. Before that, I think there were five. It still has the same population, but everybody is going to Galway or Castlebar to do the big shop. That is the way it has happened. I think we need a much bigger debate on rural Ireland and on the trite lines spun by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment.

Why am I spending time on this when the Chairman is anxious to get to west Cork? It is because the Government is going to draw up three plans in the next month or so that are all built on this false premise. They will be called the spacial plan, the capital plan and the mitigation plan. They are against the rural part of rural Ireland, as is the Minister of State's own rural plan, which I quoted back to him in the Dáil, which talks about stopping people living in the one-off house in the countryside as something that is desirable. It is no good saying that the Department has got money for all of this when we do not seem to even know what we are trying to achieve. I hate being called a hinterland. I hate rural Ireland being called a hinterland of anywhere. It infers an inferior status.

A lot of the drive that has come into this economy through young people coming to the city who are well-educated, smart, driven and competitive has come from those much-benighted one-off houses of rural Ireland. If we look at GAA clubs around the country, there are more superb players per thousand of population in rural areas. Go to the towns and go to the rural areas. When I think of all-Ireland competitors like Ballyea, St. Thomas's and other clubs in Derry and so on, I ask how they can, with they tiny populations, take on St. Vincent's, Nemo Rangers and other big city clubs. I then realise that we have a huge resource in rural Ireland. There is a lot of drive and energy. It is not dependent on the town. It is dependent on a self-reliant community. Yet, we will not give them the crumbs off the table. I guarantee that when these trade plans come out, they will be totally focused against one of the greatest drivers of our economy, which is the real rural communities.