Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The CLÁR programme is mentioned in the motion in respect of gender equality but I cannot understand how gender equality comes into the controlling board of CLÁR because there is no such structure. However, we will ignore that aspect. The CLÁR programme is based on the principle of not creating new bureaucracies, however, some might say it is creating parallel structures. CLÁR uses every existing structure, much to the criticism of the programme. If it concerns a road, I get the county council to do the work. If it concerns a water scheme, it is either the communities through the group schemes or the county council through the county council schemes that do it. The total staff involved in administering the scheme is five. All the money in CLÁR goes to activities on the ground and it tracks other moneys from other Departments that would not be spent in those areas. For example, every time we put in place one of the high cost group water schemes, which are not being set up in the most rural areas, we track €6 or €7 for every euro we put in. Areas are getting water now that could never have dreamt of getting water if it had not been for the CLÁR programme.

CLÁR has done something much more fundamental, however. When the debate started about setting up CLÁR, it was meant to come under RAPID in respect of rural areas. I was advised by my civil servants to follow what had happened previously — they did that in good faith and I am not criticising them — and that was to use some poverty indices to pick the areas. That was understandable because that was the way it was negotiated with the social partners, but I kicked over the traces. I objected on two bases. I asked how I would explain to anybody I picked that out of 57 poverty indices, numbers 1 and 2, rural poverty, is always exported. The young person without a job goes to the city. The young person without a house goes to the local town.

The problem continues to be pushed away and when we look at what remains, we believe the people are not too badly off. I coined a phrase at the time to the effect that when one person is left in west Mayo, that person will be very rich. He or she will own all the land but he or she will be very lonely. It is not a simple poverty issue. It is a community issue. I therefore chose as a criterion the constant haemorrhage of population out of rural areas. I set the bar at 50% decline since 1926. If I did nothing else by that programme, I put the issue of rural depopulation on the map. I claim some credit for that.

Deputy Ó Caoláin raised a farming issue. On a recent television programme, "An Tuath Nua", a television interview done with me in 1976 or 1977 was played. My hair was a little longer but the colour has not changed much.

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