Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With regard to similar issues, page 41 of the programme for Government spoke of the Government making a Cabinet-level Minister responsible for regional and rural affairs. I do not see a Cabinet-level Minister. Indeed, if it is the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, or the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, and I am not sure whether he is at Cabinet, the question can be legitimately asked what we are doing.

We have become consumed and conditioned by a culture of service reduction and alienation of rural and regional Ireland. Is it the Government's policy to continue to ignore the regions? The national planning framework, which should underpin the future of post offices instead of the rumoured 80 closures we hear of today, is written in such a way that the template provided for people to give submissions next week is going to exclude the whole north-west of the country and west of Mullingar. We seemed to have defined it in such a way that the future growth and potential of the country is going to come from elsewhere. It seems to be written in terms of the pretence given to the strategic environmental assessment that it is going to undermine the potential of these regions to perform to their capacity.

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