Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and Minister of State to the meeting. I will speak about the local improvement scheme but I do not know which programme it is under. On foot of the Minister's remarks about taking suggestions on board for tweaking schemes, this is a vital scheme for rural Ireland. It provides better connectivity for communities. During the lifetime of the Thirty-second Dáil, the Joint Committee on Rural and Community Development made a proposal that the Department of Rural and Community Development reach out to the Department of Transport and to local authorities to develop a new scheme that would be properly funded. Three different funding streams would be pulled together. I acknowledge that €10.5 million is a lot of money but if one breaks it down on a county basis, one sees that County Clare gets €500,000. As the county has a list of roads that is longer than the length of my arm, it will be years before the issues will be tackled. I believe we must do more work on this and re-examine the scheme. We must reach out to the Department of Transport and get it involved in a joint initiative with the Department of Rural and Community Development. It would also tie in the local authorities and get them to make a contribution as well. We would therefore have a more substantive programme and much more money. We would get a great deal more work done. That is my proposal to the Minister. I hope she will take it to the Department of Transport and, perhaps, report back to the committee on her progress on that proposal.

I welcome the work that has been done on the connected hubs initiative and I compliment the work of the Western Development Commission in that regard. The biggest issue in rural Ireland is access to broadband. While that does not fall under the remit of this committee, there is an acknowledgement from the Government that the broadband scheme has to be accelerated. Is the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, party to discussions in that regard? As she said, remote working and access to broadband are transformational. If the Minister is part of those discussions, where does she see this going? How will the national broadband scheme be accelerated?