Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

All of that is excellent and needs to happen, but the point I am making relates to a difficulty we have with tourism projects that make a significant difference in many places. Someone said to me recently that a lot of this stuff is for the benefit of people who make their money somewhere else and come to spend it in our local areas. We need stuff that allows people to make their money in our local areas. There needs to be a productive economy in rural Ireland. It should not just be a recreational economy. That is one of the things that have been missing. The Minister mentioned the food hub in Drumshanbo, which is an absolutely excellent project that has made a huge difference to the town. Almost 100 people are working in the hub at the moment. We need more of that. A man told me last week that he had been speaking to a food company in the Far East that supplies major hotels in that part of the world. The company in question is unable to get enough of artisan Irish food like cheese that has a story to it. The food hub in Drumshanbo is producing the kind of niche products that we need to try to bring into the mainstream to a certain extent. Such initiatives can bring life back into rural Ireland. The Department of Rural and Community Development has an opportunity to start to work on this. One of the problems we have had with successive Governments - I am not blaming the current Government, in particular - is that every Department and every part of the Civil Service seeks to push things along to be done somewhere else. The Minister for Rural and Community Development has an opportunity to be the person who does not push this issue somewhere else. He should pull it all in and say we want this to happen in rural Ireland. As Deputy Ó Cuív said, we want to leverage money from somewhere else. If we are to make that happen, the Department of Rural and Community Development will have to put up the first challenge to everywhere else to come on board with it.