Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reason we have this is to help us plan for the services that will be required. If members are going to argue for the provision of increased rural transport services or other services for particular areas, we must have an idea of for whom they will be needed. They will be required for the people in an area and to meet the demand on foot of additional housing that will be required in the future. That constitutes planning for the future and building up the services that will be required.

Deputy Michael Collins and Danny Healy-Rae raised the issue of broadband connectivity and other services in rural areas. The funding for every service throughout this country has suffered cuts during the past seven or eight years. No one has ever denied that. The country did not have the required funding. The spend by Government was cut by more than €20 billion per year, which had a knock-on effect on every service in all our towns and villages. We are now trying to build that back up. This plan looks ahead 20 to 25 years and its focus is on where we need to invest the resources and, when we get increases towards the back end of the years, where such taxpayers' money should be spent. I advise Deputy Michael Collins that this plan will support rural living. I recognise, as he said, that this means post offices and the services that are needed in villages. The Deputy was correct in what he said. The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, announced changes to provide opportunities for people and I hope that those opportunities will be taken up. That is also what this is about. We are putting in place initiatives with respect to both strategies for towns and villages but people have to avail of the opportunities presented. We are trying to plan in a co-ordinated way to achieve this as best as we can.

I believe we all agree on the issue of broadband connectivity. I also represent a rural area that is not served well in terms of broadband connectivity. Access to broadband services is part of people's future in terms of their connectivity, business and security. We all agree that the roll-out of the national broadband plan has been delayed for far too long. When it gets through this final stage in the months ahead and the contract is awarded, I believe it will be rolled out quite quickly. No one can excuse the delays in its being rolled out. I agree with Deputy Danny Healy-Rae on that. With the opportunities it will bring when it is finally implemented, we will be leading the way in this area in Europe, and rightly so. As a small island nation, we need broadband connectivity in order to thrive. We are committed to that and a decision has to be made in the months ahead on who will be awarded the contract, which has been delayed for too long.

The rural proofing of policies is part of this. This plan is about rural and urban Ireland and the balance, partnership and linkages, bearing in mind that one affects the other and that one will not be sustained without the other. It touches on rail services and different projects but I will not list all those projects because it falls within the gift of other Departments to make announcements on them in other plans.

Regarding bus services, including those in rural areas, Deputy Heydon is not a Minister yet but he hopes to be. He will be glad that Deputy Danny Healy-Rae gave him that promotion. Deputy Heydon has put forward suggestions in respect of increasing the number of routes and some of them relate to Deputy Danny Healy Rae's area. He is not saying that is the be all and end all. There are simply suggestions and we all agree on that. There have been some great rural transport services. I see them operating in my own area. I refer to the Flexibus and LocalLink operators which are providing great services. Operators of services in Cork and Kerry are also providing great connections. We need more of that but we must plan for it and work out where there are population groups and whom and what we need to connect to each other. That is what we are trying to do in this plan. There are prime examples of such services operating in Cork. I would point to Clonakilty, a town in the Deputy's constituency, Westport and Trim in my area. People have got together in many towns and made the provision of such services happen in rural areas. It is about making it happen. That is what we are trying to do here. There are some great examples of that in the counties that we all represent but we want more of that and to get in behind those initiatives. That requires everybody to be on the same page, working together in a planned and co-ordinated way and targeting resources to make an impact, not just to suit some people on certain days but to make an impact in a town or village in the long run.

Deputy Michael Colllins raised a local issue concerning the harvesting of kelp. It does not relating to the framework but we have a marine strategy and we will be dealing with that. The decision on that issue was made many years ago by a former Green Party Minister who was very concerned about the environment. He made an environmentally aware decision. I had to make an announcement about the conditions attaching to that in the past week to make sure that we had proper monitoring of that development. I am very clear on this. If a project such as this receives planning permission, if such permission was secured many years ago and if the development is not carried out in the proper manner we envisaged with respect to the conditions attached to the permission, then we deal with that. In the context of the conditions I announced, I have to benchmark those that are in place and try to track and monitor those to protect the marine environment in the area. We are very clear on that. However, this is not the time to deal with that issue because we are discussing another matter.