Mr. Peter Tyndall:

It is a complicated issue. The first thing is that large concentrations of people in remote rural locations do not work particularly well. It does not serve the interests of the individuals. With some of the more remote centres with which we dealt, people were a long way from anything so that does not work very well. Large concentrations in small communities can have a unbalancing effect on the community. On the other hand, we are all aware of very bad examples of people being concentrated together to enable them to have access to facilities but this leading to ghettoisation to some extent. Luckily Ireland has avoided this experience, which is not uncommon in other European countries and the UK.

Moving away from large centres is a very important element in dealing with this issue. Putting groups of people in remote locations never works. Having people reasonably dispersed around the State and not concentrated in particular areas has helped to enrich our communities, as we have seen in many instances, but also helps to avoid that resistance one sometimes sees. There is no easy answer to this question. There is no perfect solution. What is proposed, which involves having people accommodated in a wider variety of settings, is good but people also need to be able to access facilities so using remote rural locations to house concentrations of people does not work.