Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is not mine. I have to start again now. One of the services in Kerry that the Government made such a hullabaloo about was to take people from Castlegregory to Cloghane to a card game one Tuesday in the month for ten months. Clearly, this is not any part of the pilot scheme because the Minister is saying the pilot scheme is for six months. The initiative I am referring to is for ten months. It is something that Rural Link was doing in any event. I welcome it, however, and I welcome the fact that the people of Cloghane are being taken to Castlegregory.

While these routes are welcome, some of the people in the small villages are saying that if one takes people from a village to a town, one is hurting the village further. The Minister is kind of blaming the Rural Link services for not making more applications or more expansive applications. The Department said €200,000 would be available nationally. The Minister is all over the place now looking for this and that. When the service providers were asked about this, they knew the context and the areas in question. When the Minister gets a few more notes, I will talk again.

When the Department advertised or asked the local services to make submissions, the latter knew that, nationally, €200,000 was not enough. They also knew the extent of the problem. Consider the circumstances if one were to service areas such as the Black Valley, Lauragh, places off the Ring of Kerry, Sneem and the vast areas around it and Glencar. There is a mention of the latter. Regarding the servicing of Glencar, €200,000 would not service the area back to Caragh Lake and over to Glenbeigh and down into Cromane. A sum of €100,000 would not be enough for that area on its own. The service providers knew that. They have other things to be doing besides pandering and trying to make some kind of case to the Minister when they know they will not get the funds they require.

The Minister is saying that the Department will roll the scheme out further after six months. I put it to him that it will roll it in. Why is the Department not honouring the agreement on transport to the central schools? When the Government closed down schools in 1956, it gave a commitment that it would transport people's children into the central school in Kilgarvan regardless. It was to be free transport but that is not the case any more. The Department has put barriers in the way such that there must be ten children in order for a run to operate. The families in rural places cannot produce children like that. One must produce another child or another two more to ensure that the bus service remains in place. That is the honest truth. The Department cannot fund the transport services it is supposed to be providing. Therefore, it is hard for me to believe the Department is going to give endless money to help the people who will be isolated in rural areas. They will be isolated. They will be left at home.

The Minister alleged that my argument was to benefit my own pub. The fact is that people go from house to house. They have to travel three or four miles to a neighbour's house. The done thing was to give a fellow a drink. They cannot even have that now. That is the truth. They will be isolated in their homes. They will be like a rabbit inside a burrow afraid to come out because the fox would catch it. The same scenario will feature in rural Ireland. People will not be able to go out to have just the one drink. The Minister should forget it because his rural transport initiative does not go far enough. I welcome whatever is in place that the Minister might have had something to do with but I know he had nothing to do with the service from Castlegregory to Cloghane.

The trouble is that the Minister thinks he is from rural Ireland. My advice to him, bearing in mind that I will not take him around, is that he should get his Fine Gael colleagues to take him down to Kerry. He will not do it in a day; he might do it in three weeks or a month. He should take his summer holidays in Kerry in order to see what he is actually doing to the people there.

The Minister is now admitting that there is a problem. This follows our vast representations in the Dáil Chamber outlining to the Minister how it will adversely affect people. If the Minister thinks this will satisfy rural proofing, it will not.

When the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill is passed there will be no more mention about extra funding for rural transport to help people in their rural and isolated places down the narrow roads two, three and four miles into the lonely valleys. Massive sums would be involved to meet the requirements following the Minister's devastating Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2017. The Minister does not have it, and if the Department had it, I do not believe it has the liking to give it to rural areas. It is more likely to be given to Dublin and to the bigger towns and cities, which is the aim of the Project Ireland 2040 plan. The Government is forgetting about rural Ireland. I am sad that this is happening day in and day out. I put it to the Taoiseach in the Dáil Chamber yesterday; he did not know what a demountable home is. I do not believe his Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government-----