Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I suppose when this Department was created there was a hope that it would be for real, that regional development and rural affairs would be taken seriously by this Department. It is clear this Department is a hollow husk, that in the end of the day the Department is almost an elaborate press statement to pretend to the people that the Government is doing something on this issue.

For example, the national broadband plan to provide broadband to rural areas for regional development was won by the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, in the interdepartmental battles. I also have a problem with the fact that in some parts of the west there are dozens of schools which have the same number of junior infants joining them at the start of the year as one school would have in the greater Dublin area meaning that schools are being closed in the west and rebuilt in the east at a cost to the State. For example, there was a bad accident on the M50 this morning at 8.30 a.m. - I hope everybody involved is okay. Six or seven miles into County Meath, there were commuters stuck in major traffic jams two hours later such is the crisis of infrastructural deficit on the east coast while much of the west is going fallow. A number of local authorities and a number of leadership organisations have told me that they have heard nothing about the national spatial plan. There is no ground-up grassroots element involved.

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