Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Parnell for the presentation. There are many issues. There are some attitudinal matters I would like to touch on. First, I noticed that all the documentation that comes from the Department refers to rural towns and villages. Here Mr. Parnell throws in communities. Once again, I must stress that 30% of the people who live outside the towns and villages do not see themselves as they are envisaged. They go to the town or village to shop or whatever but they regard themselves as being part of communities in their own right, particularly those involved in organisations such as the GAA. Once again, it is important to stress that the vast majority in rural Ireland do not live in towns and villages. That might seem a small point but it keeps coming up. I was made very much aware of this last night. I was talking to a public representative in the Houses who lives in a very rural area of a county adjacent to Dublin. He told me that in the new county plan, the wishes of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications have come true at last. There will be no houses built in rural parishes, even those that do not have overcrowded schools, unless the applicant is functionally dependent on the land. I could count on two hands the number of houses that will be involved, even in the large county involved. That is why I have to keep raising this issue. An attack is being made on the rural Ireland we know. A new rural Ireland is being created, and I am not sure it is one I want. We have to keep highlighting that. I certainly will do so.

Covid has been negative for everybody but I hate the béal bocht. I reckon that, for young and old alike, rural areas were the lucky places. When one gets lucky, one should not always say one is unlucky and whinge. From talking to my neighbours and friends all around Connemara, and to people on the islands, I noted the first point made was that the people have space. When the pandemic began, we saw footage from Italy in which everybody was on top of one another in high-rise flats. The residents could not get away from their neighbours. If they wanted to socially isolate, it was very difficult. The first thing we realised here is that we have the greatest gift. We are all on half-acre sites, which give us space to ourselves. If we wanted to keep the kids away from other kids when they were kept from school in the spring, it was much easier to do so on a half-acre site than on a street or in an apartment in the city.

Suddenly people woke up in the morning and smelled the coffee and said their circumstances were not bad compared to those seen in other places on the television. Many people remarked that it was a brilliant spring. Saint Patrick's Day was fierce but after that the weather improved. People were walking, and those near the coast could get to the strand in five minutes. I see this as a time in which the quiet revolution has started that will have the huge impact on the whole of society. As pointed out, people are now moving out of the urban areas voluntarily. They are not being forced out; they have suddenly realised that there is no actual need to be tied to a fixed office in the city all the time. They are moving out to places they want to live in. Nobody is forcing them to go there. Many people went home for a few weeks during the lockdown because they could put the laptop up on the table and they were able to look out the window at God's nature. It was easier to isolate socially. We should, therefore, look at the positive side and say this could be the turning of the corner for rural regeneration and rebirth. It could lead to more balanced populations in rural areas. We should always see the glass as half full.

I keep hearing about rural isolation. Isolation is a major issue but in many cases it is worse in the cities because it is easier to become socially isolated in a city, particularly, funnily enough, in middle-class parts, whose populations tend to be more transient because people move to different areas from generation to generation. In looking at the effect of Covid, we should remember that Willie Bermingham, who founded ALONE, did not start out the country. We must acknowledge that while social isolation is a major issue everywhere, the social capital out the country is really good, certainly in my parish. The minute Covid started, the local organisations, without any help from the State, made sure that every older person had his or her shopping done and delivered to the door. Communities got together to minimise the number of people going to the shops. Rather than having five families go to the shop, thereby creating a risk, a family could order what it wanted by telephone, have it delivered and pay the bill at the end of the week. We need to be positive and stop doing the béal bocht.

I recall having this debate years ago with a Deputy in the House. I said that if rural Ireland was as bad as he was saying, he should shift all the people out of it. I said I did not believe his argument. I would not live in the city. I chose to live in the country because I believe the quality of life is way better there. There narrative we hear all the time makes it sound as if we were all on our uppers and lacking services. We definitely need better things but, in the round, rural living has great advantages. We need to get positive about this.