Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

When I speak about rural revitalisation, what I mean is that communities would come together and identify the needs of that community and property within it. Obviously, it is a voluntary process. We are not talking about resettlement. We are talking about revitalisation where people would voluntarily come to live in rural Ireland and be received into a community with a huge amount of volunteerism. They are people who could rejuvenate Ireland. We want a bottom-up approach meeting a top-down approach where the Government, either through the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government or the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, would form an organisation or structure where people in urban areas could find out where they could relocate to if they so wished and create a new life for themselves with access to smaller schools, open spaces and outdoor living - a different concept - because people become very claustrophobic and introverted in urban areas where they are homeless. It is a conceptual thing where people would move in their mind as well as physically from an urban environment to a rural environment and see the positive aspects of it.

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