Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

When I initially became Minister of State with responsibility for the islands in 1997, two aspects predominated in terms of maintaining populations on the islands. One was the physical infrastructure. Some islands lacked water, others electricity while piers were a pervasive problem on virtually all the islands. Roads were also a major problem and so on. A substantial amount of money has been spent on getting the infrastructure to an adequate standard.

The other major issue at the time, after which enormous strides have been made, related to the ferry services which were totally inadequate for modern living. Islanders are no different from anybody else in that they want to get to and from where they live safely with ease, on a guaranteed service with a proper timetable at a reasonable price.

To put the Deputy in the framework as regards how things were, at that time the Gaeltacht islands had subsidised ferry services, but the non-Gaeltacht islands did not. Virtually every island with a small population, such as Long, Heir, Whiddy, Beare, Cape Clear and Sherkin, all have subsidised ferry services now. Moving up along the west coast, Inishmore, Inishmaan, Inishboffin, Turk, Clare, Inishbiggle, Aranmore and Toraigh all now have subsidised ferry services. I believe that was crucial. However, the requirements are now changing and employment has become a major issue. For that reason, I have arranged a dedicated Leader partnership just for islands, even though there are only 3,000 people there, because unless they have dedicated services we will not get the benefit of the infrastructural spend in terms of developing the population and so on. A fairly comprehensive programme of work is in hand.

See this speech in context