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

Fáilte romhaibh ó na hoileáin. I welcome everyone from the islands. It is good to see them.

I have always found that the big policy issues are relatively easy. Delivery is always our problem.

I wish to reference some of the issues raised. Housing is a big issue on the islands. There is no question or doubt about that. We need a bank of land on each island for social, affordable and other permanent housing. There are people moving to the islands who cannot get a site and, if they do, they cannot get planning permission. We have to tackle that issue nationally. I was disappointed it was not tackled more comprehensively in the islands plan. Second, Croí Cónaithe is positive. The Croí Cónaithe means that if there is a derelict house and a person does it up for permanent dwelling – it cannot be done up as a holiday home – there is up to €90,000 available, plus the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI grants. We should note that because that is a step in the right direction. It stops them all being sold off, as they are at the moment, as holiday homes or at least it gives people a competitive advantage on the market. As a matter of interest, if people get planning permission in Galway for a house on a family-need basis or a housing-need basis, an inurement is put on that for seven years that they must have resided in that house for seven years. If they sell it, they have to have resided in it for seven years before they can sell it on the open market. People cannot build a house and then say, "I did not really want this for a house.” That is positive and I have always supported that policy.

On sanitation, my belief on the islands is, as I think all my island friends know, that the island fund should make a contribution towards this. If we wait for Irish Water to do it on the basis of population, they will always be at the bottom of the queue because of the dispersed, small populations, inaccessibility and costs-prices. Therefore, we need to bump up the island fund and get the Department with responsibility for the islands to negotiate to deliver on water and sanitation. We can talk about all the policies we want. The question is how the Government will deliver.

Mr. Murray and Ms Rantala are absolutely right that there should be facility for second-level education. I think we know the problem we are hitting up against. It should be linked to the local school. We have to get a synergy between the local school and the island because students have to grow up and will want to be able to access some things in the local school with the facilities they have and so on. On the other hand, they should get other parts of their education on their island. It could be all hybrid; it could be two or three days a week, summer term or winter term. Different things can be done in different places. In summer, it would be distance education. However, the distance education should be to the local, nearest school possible so they could attend in person. For example, if students are doing physics, they can do all the theory online but they would have to do the practicals in the laboratories. I find that in many of these things, the big policy is right but we need to get all the players locally to buy in.

On the freight issue, I am aware of the problem. The freight prices should be negotiated when the contract comes up. The islanders should insist on getting it totally revised from A through Z. We have discussed that issue but it needs to happen. What actually happened was that on Inis Mór, the freight prices were brought down two thirds from what they used to be historically, so they were very happy. There are anomalies in the price list and they need to be tackled. They are "tackleable" because when the new contract is coming up, the Department should accede that the freight prices give the islanders the benefit of the subsidy.

On rural Ireland and the SDGs, this is particularly relevant to islands but it is also relevant to the mainland. There are two ways of trying to solve our problem. One is to move all the people into cities but we know the problem that gives us and, anyway, there will be a residual population in the country so all electric cables and so on will still have to be run and the services will still have to be provided. Much more rational, of course, is to keep viable rural communities and decarbonise the community. As somebody living in a rural area, I already have solar panels for my water but my intention is put them in for my electricity, so not only will I produce my own but I will export any surplus. In time, when they become a reasonable value, I will get an electric vehicle, EV, car. At this stage, we are beginning to run thin on the arguments against it except many people do not like rural houses but that is their tough luck. As far as I am concerned, that is a democratic debate we must have for those who are for and those who are against. However, sustainability is not necessarily the issue because, in other ways, social sustainability in rural communities is extraordinarily good. Achievement of young people growing up tends to be very high and, therefore, if we are talking about total sustainability, we have to consider issues other than just pure carbon because carbon is eliminated by technology.

I am a great believer in technology.

On broadband, this goes back to technology coming to the people rather than the people going to the technology. My guess is these digital hubs will be relatively little used within five years, except by those who visit our areas. The vast majority of people will have digital access, as I do at home. I am lucky to have 60 Mbps fibre to the box. There is a massive digital divide within most rural communities. Among my neighbours, 100 houses have fibre, about 20 are like me and have fibre to the box and about 200 are dependent on mobile systems. It will be great to get the uptake. There has been a little bit of slippage but by 2026, give or take, everybody will have it and we will not change how that will happen except to keep the skids under them. We will not change fundamentally how we deliver this. Nobody wants to go back on the policy. I commend the Chair on the work he did on that and for delivering fibre rather than 30 Mbps, which was a major victory against the naysayers.

On rural transport, the theory is fine. They gave us three new BusConnects serving the Connemara region, one going from An Cheathrú Rua to Claremorris, one from An Cheathrú Rua to Clifden and another going from Clifden to Westport. Yippee, we got three services each way. We will take that as a start. Not too bad, except there is one problem. I come from Dublin where bus stops are a few hundred yards apart. I asked them how far apart these bus stops were. Some of them are over 14 km apart. Older people will not cycle there and are unlikely to walk there. That is once you get to the main road. You might be a further distance down a bóithrín. We have a great ability to have great policy but I have spent my life on delivery, delivery, delivery.