Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Frustration is the word that comes to mind - absolute frustration. There is a lack of action and a lack of vision. While the Minister of State has listed so much, and he is right about the Atlantic corridor and everything else which I have heard all about, it is not materialising on the ground. That is what is frustrating people. They are seeing it in the papers but not on their own roads or in their own communities. The Minister of State talked about various Departments working really well together. However, one Department that is letting down rural Ireland is the Department of Social Protection. It is the Department that is pulling out the bare necessities and the bare threads keeping communities together. While we might have all of the actions to develop and kickstart rural Ireland, if we do not have the Tús workers, the rural social scheme workers and if they are not provided with supervisors on the ground to keep communities selling the best of their wares, we will not be able to bring in tourists and sell what is really good in the west of Ireland. We are failing them.

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