Jerry Cowley (Mayo, Independent)

I am not talking about rural areas but rather an area of Mayo which comprises half the county and is larger than many counties. I am not referring to urban centres alone but rather half of County Mayo where the population has dropped significantly.

Central Statistics Office figures indicate that disposable income in the west was 7.8% below the State average. In Mayo and Roscommon the figures were, respectively, 15.5% and 14.7% below the national average. When the 2000 figures are compared with five years earlier, Galway has improved but Mayo and Roscommon are slipping all the time. When one examines the gross value added of goods and service, GVA, in the CSO data, the average output level per person in the west is significantly below the national average at 23.8%, an increase of 0.3% over the 1996 level. This is further evidence that the western region is not attracting its share of high value growth employment.

Some 62% of our graduates must find work in Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow. Would it not be better to end supports for the high population areas, which already have so many people that they are travelling at the pace of an ass and cart, and instead invest in Mayo, particularly north-west Mayo, which needs it? The Tánaiste referred to Shannon Development. In that context, why can we not have a Shannon Development-type scheme for north-west Mayo? Otherwise, no one will be left there by the end of the century. It is not only I who state this fact. The census figures prove it.

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