Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It was the Ceann Comhairle. I find it highly ironic that I am probably the only Dub in the House. I do not know about the guys working here, but I certainly feel like asking whether there any Dubs in the House at all. It is always made to look like there is an urban-rural divide behind this. However, most of the rural Deputies are from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and it is extraordinarily ironic that they come into the House time after time making a commitment to rural Ireland, yet at every hand's turn they are destroying its very existence with their policies.

I argue that there is not some deep fissure between people born in the greater Dublin area and the rest of the country. Indeed, most of the people in the Dublin area have country cousins. There is not an antagonism towards rural Ireland. It is rather an issue of politics and class. I will go through the statistics later on. Just as there are very isolated parts of rural Ireland in which people suffer deep poverty, unemployment and tick all of the boxes, that can also be seen in areas like Neilstown, Jobstown and in parts of my constituency such as Ballyfermot. The question of class is very fundamental to this. The way in which resources are used is very fundamental. Most important, it is political policies that are driving the destruction and the isolation of rural Ireland. They are the policies of modern-day neoliberalism that says that everything has to happen to turn over a buck and make a profit, despite the occupancy of the areas, the quality of life and the people who live within them.

I completely agree with Deputy Ferris and could not repeat as eloquently as he did the tragedy of what has happened to rural fishing communities. It is tragic. I often think when I see the Wild Atlantic Way advertised - I know the west very well as I love it - that it is advertising something the State has pulled apart and destroyed. There used to be dozens of little piers around Mayo, Galway, Donegal and Kerry that one could drive along, visit, camp beside, hang out in or rent a house nearby. The life has been torn out of them. One will hardly ever see a crab cage or a bunch of nets there because the life has been torn out of those rural communities. As a consequence, the people have left.

I will look at three specific issues that I have been involved in since I was elected to the House. The first is Bus Éireann. Rural transport is being treated, again, like a commodity. If it does not turn over a profit and does not do so fast enough to compete on the open market with the private operators, what is the Government's answer? It is to drive down the wages and conditions of the workers in the company and to take away many of the rural transport routes. Something like 200 towns and cities, mainly towns, have been left without Bus Éireann services. At the end of this month, the bus line that services Dublin to Derry is going to be closed. I know that it is going to be passed on to the Translink company in Northern Ireland, but at the same time, we are going to bypass many towns that bus route serves. We have seen the strike and been through the arguments about this. The National Transport Authority is a quango set up by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport that allows the Minister, Deputy Ross, to sit through months of the transport strike, and probably to do so again in the future, while it tries to bully workers into accepting deals with the threat that this company will fold if they do not accept them. It allows Deputy Ross to say it has nothing to do with him, that it is the National Transport Authority that issues the licences and that it is a dispute between the National Transport Authority and the unions. That neoliberal hands-off approach to a very fundamental service in rural Ireland has led to much of its isolation.

The second remarkable thing I would like to talk about is the closure of the post offices and the demise of what those post offices meant to rural Ireland and to villages. I have certainly never lived long enough in rural Ireland, but anecdotally I can tell the Minister of State of how I have seen first-hand the post office act as a social headquarters for local villages and communities. The postmaster or postmistress was almost like a social worker knowing exactly who or what needed help and when and how it needed it. If someone did not show up, he or she would send someone out to look after them because God knows what was wrong with them. All of that has been torn out. What I found remarkable over recent months both in the committee and in the Dáil is that between the three different Ministers, none of them would take responsibility for it. To my knowledge, they are still not taking responsibility for it. They are all getting paid a nice fat wage and will retire on nice fat pensions, but they are not taking responsibility for the demise of one of the crucial services that look after rural Ireland.

The last thing I want to talk about in terms of infrastructure is broadband. We have privatised the provision of broadband and we are still making a bags of it. The Government's idea is to take it away, let companies compete with each other, see which can give us the best price and see where it goes from there. In the 1950s, we were able to turn on the lights in the Black Valley and in every little isolated community in Ireland. We did not ask how long it would take to tender it or what company would be able to deliver it quicker, faster or neater. We set up a State company called the Electricity Supply Board and that did the business. It brought the power to the Black Valley, to Glencolumbkille and wherever else. We are going to make a bags of it by putting it in private hands, just as we are making a bags of the question of social housing provision.

As long as we prioritise the right of profit over the right of communities, individuals and our population to decent services, we will face the continued decline, isolation and utter destruction of our rural communities. As a Dub, I find that obnoxious. I will stand up for those communities, be they the post office workers, the bus workers or any of those fishing communities, at any stage at which they stand up and fight this State for adopting a neoliberal approach to their lives rather than one that actually fulfils their needs.

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