Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are talking about the national planning framework, but we are also addressing the development of communities in rural Ireland. We have been given a brief synopsis of what we should be discussing. If there is to be any hope of turning things around in rural Ireland, the creation of employment is a huge issue. As Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív said, there has been little or no funding for secondary roads. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, might say to me that he has provided a sum of €30,000, but I am talking about serious funding. In my constituency very poor funding has been received for the N71 which extends from Shannon to the peninsulas, including Bere Island and Mizen Head. How can we open up west Cork? One must provide broadband - the service is extremely poor, as is mobile phone coverage in many places - and the roads must also be improved. If we could tackle issues throughout the country such as the improvement of the N71, we would start to open up rural communities to employment creation.

We talk about planning in rural areas and the granting of planning permission. That is another issue that needs to be addressed. Planning permission is being refused to many young people who perhaps are working in a city but who want to live or have great ideas to create employment in a local community. If one looks at the guidelines, one will see that they are too strict. They are against the giving of planning permission to local people, in particular, and even to someone who is willing to set up a business. There are poor planning laws that need to be looked at.

I see rural-proofing as one of the topics to be considered. The process is certainly is not working and the Government needs to give it serious consideration. The farcical Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill was not rural-proofed. The Minister said he had met various groups and that he would meet all of them again. All he is doing is saying what he will do. He needs to look for rural transport solutions to enable people to come and go from their communities freely.

There are positives. We do not always need to dwell on the negatives. The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, recently started a post office pilot scheme in Mullingar, Ennis and Bantry. Through an online service people will be able to purchase goods locally on a Tuesday evening and receive them in the post the next morning.

That is a move in the right direction and we are starting to compete with the online world. I hope the people of Bantry and its surroundings, as well as Ennis and Mullingar, will take it up when it starts in January 2018. Hopefully, businesses will tie in with it and use the opportunities it will present.

Payment of motor tax needs to move to the post office network. There is a big opportunity with this. Motor tax collection is being moved to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. It might provide an opportunity for people to be able to tax their cars at their post office. We want to save our post office network. Community banking using the network could also assist in this regard.

On islands, there are eight islands in my constituency. Peninsulas should be included in this. I live on a peninsula myself and I know how it is difficult as they can be poorly populated with poor employment and difficult transport access. This needs to be studied.

Once, with a twinning project with Goleen Community Council, I travelled to Vihtijärvi in Finland. I noticed the Finns had a very good medical care system. I accept they pay high taxes but they get something for that. In every rural community, the children are collected from the door, taken to school, fed and brought home to the door. Their medical care is also fully covered. That is the road we need to travel. In Ireland taxes are low but families are burned out by all the payments they must make instead. The Finns have a good system, which is well worth examining.

While we talk about developing rural communities, the previous Government destroyed many rural communities and community voluntary organisations. I was a member of the voluntary forum but the previous Government disbanded it, along with town councils. We need to further develop community councils because they are the life and soul of many communities, helping to get community centres up and running and providing services such as Meals on Wheels. We need to look at the Leader programme to undo the mess made of it. Funding has not been given to communities and we are two years short of the programme ending.

I come from a community perspective. I would not have been elected to the Dáil only for the people of the community who are 100% behind me because I speak only for communities. We need to look at the struggles in communities. Some communities feel no one is listening. This week thousands of people came out in the Bantry area, pleading with the Government not to allow the proposal to harvest mechanically hundreds of acres of kelp in Bantry Bay. That is against community spirit and will be an environmental disaster. People say “No” but no one is listening.

I am fighting with CIÉ on the school transport rule that a child must go to the nearest school to the bus service. That is fine if the bus takes the natural route. However, I have some situations in west Cork where the bus takes a boreen to prove a route is 0.1 km shorter in order to take the child to one school than another. That is a disgrace. The bus should take the natural route.

There is much done against people in communities trying to go about their daily lives. I hope we can work together on this national planning framework to change that.