Dr. Brian Hughes:

It is not the way. The problems faced by rural Ireland are the same worldwide. Welsh sheep farmers, for example, live on an average income of £12,500 a year, 85% of which comes from the EU. The problems faced here are not specific to Ireland. That is my point. The opportunities that Ireland has, however, are going to benefit this country hugely if we take things in easy stages and make the right decisions at the right time.

This plan, Ireland 2040 Our Plan - Issues and Choices, is out to 2040. It is going to be the replacement for the national spatial strategy. I really worry about this document in the context of what Deputy Ó Cuív has just said, however, because on several of its pages it seems to suggest that we need to think again about the business as usual model that has got us to where we are. The bailout is gone, we have had the third or fourth year of the strongest European growth, and yet this plan we are now looking at for both urban and rural Ireland plans to try to modify or get rid of the business as usual model. We need all the resources we can get to help both urban and rural Ireland.

Problems are not just specific to rural Ireland, but there are several rural Irelands. There is the rural Ireland the Deputy described, there is the one that I described with the half-cup of coffee in my hand, and there is a rural Ireland with the huge amount of produce from horticulture in north Dublin and so on. Given our new lifestyles and what we like, there is also the rural Ireland of fishing and seafood and so forth. We want to try to take advantage of all these assets and attributes in order that by 2040, we can get the best Ireland there can be.