Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 May 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs

Statement of Strategy 2018 to 2020 and Project Ireland 2040: Discussion

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

I remember Deputy Smyth said that. I commend any support that has been given to film festivals such as the one in Schull. It will be interesting to hear what the organisers have to say when they come before us in the months ahead.

There are eight islands off the coast of my constituency in west Cork that I often visit. They may be poorly populated but they need a voice. I do not think I have ever heard anyone on an island giving out about the ferry service and I assume that is a product of the work of the Department. We must call a spade a spade. The service is good and provides great connectivity between the mainland and the islands and people are happy that is in place. However, there are issues and I ask the Department to liaise better with the islands on them. For example, the people of Sherkin Island are trying hard to have a chaperone. We must encourage young people from the island to live there to continue its growth. That is not happening at the moment. The chaperone issue probably applies to every other island - Whiddy, Bere, Long, Cape Clear, Dursey, Heir or Garnish islands. Parents must accompany their child on the ferry taking them to the mainland when the school on the island is closed. There is no one to stay with the child, to get them on and off the ferry safely. It means that one of those parents cannot work and, most likely, their only option is to leave the island and live on the mainland. That is not good enough. We should be promoting living on our islands. I have brought this up repeatedly but it is a like a football that is being kicked from one side to another with each Department saying the issue is not its responsibility. No one has come up with a solution. There are special needs assistants, SNAs, in schools and there must be some kind of system available through the Department of Education and Skills whereby the equivalent of an SNA could accompany those children to and from the ferry in order that their parents can work and will continue to live on the island and keep the islands populated.

Another issue is social housing because people need houses on the islands in the same way as on the mainland. There are great islands in west Cork, like Bere and Whiddy islands, which need new life. The only way that can happen is through investment in social housing to give their young people an opportunity to have a home and live on the island, where they want to live. These young people are being forced off the islands because there is no social housing.

The following is probably true of most islands throughout the country but I can only talk about west Cork. There are community councils for the islands and I ask that an umbrella group be set up on these islands and that those representatives meet departmental officials once or twice a year to iron out issues and forge a closer relationship with the Department. My brother ran in the local elections and I canvassed the islands because I wanted to hear what they had to say. People on Bere Island told me they cannot get access to the mooring. They want to come on and off their boats safely and they cannot access moorings when they sail to Castletownbere. They are going through very dangerous situations to be able to access the mainland. These are small but very important issues.

Deputy Healy-Rae has touched on the issue of burning. I chaired a meeting when this passed through committee and my assumption was that the Minister would be totally out of order if he changed the recommendation of the committee. My assumption was that burning would be allowed in March and that is what a majority of us here agreed to in a vote after everybody was entitled to debate the matter. That has now changed. If one lives on a farm in a rural community, especially in west Cork where the fog and dampness does not blow over until May or June, March is the only opportunity for a controlled burn. That has been stopped by a Minister who received an instruction from this committee that burning was to go ahead but the powers-that-be have struck it off with a pen. Someone in Met Éireann seems to have more control than we have, from what I can gather.

Does the budget the Department has for the arts amount to €363 million? I stand to be corrected on that. I was frustrated that 48 local, voluntary community projects in Cork did not secure funding from the rural regeneration fund. I represent the people of Cork. Some of those voluntary community groups spent €500,000 in local community money to get projects off the ground and they were still told they were not going to get funding. The Department has a budget in excess of €300 million and it received money under rural regeneration funding. I know the Department will say that it applied for that funding and is entitled to do with it as it wishes. I accept that but the system is unfair. The Department should not be tapping into other budgets where local, community, voluntary organisations have not a hope of competing because they do not have the expertise or funding to tick the boxes. They are not getting any help from the Department of Rural and Community Development. The Department will say that money was there to be taken up but where did the money go? Did the Department get €8 million? I stand to be corrected on that but 48 voluntary groups in Cork received nothing.

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