Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Martin Kenny for bringing this Bill to the Dáil because it is very close to my heart. I was involved in the negotiations for a partnership Government. On page 42 of the Programme for a Partnership Government document, it states:

As part of our smarter regulation agenda, the new Government will step up the use of impact assessments across Government, driven by a new specialised section within the Cabinet Secretariat. The new impact assessment guidelines will have to take account of impacts on rural Ireland as well as other socio-economic factors.

That is actually in the programme for Government. The commitment to carry out impact assessments is already there. It seems to me that this Bill will take that aspiration of the Programme for a Partnership Government a step further and enshrine it in legislation. At European Commission level, impact assessments are conducted for all major policy proposals to guide decision-makers and improve the quality of legislation. The office of the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development in Europe sees impact assessment models as a support to the development of policy with the aim of making the best possible evidence available to those who are responsible for making choices and taking decisions. This is not new. It is enshrined in our programme for Government and also in Europe.

I would take issue with just confining it to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I believe carrying out impact studies should be a cross-departmental responsibility. It could involve the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, the Department of Health, the Department of Education and Skills, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. It needs to be broadened out in that regard. The Bill will put an onus on public bodies to focus on rural-proofing and carry out not just environmental assessment statements for planning but also rural impact assessment statements, which will make us aware of the positive and negative factors associated with any particular policy and how it will affect rural society.

This is not just an economy, it is also a society. We have to respect that. We need to rural-proof many of our decisions. I was involved in a campaign which started out as very narrow; it was no doctor, no village. We soon realised, however, as we organised town hall meetings around the county, that it was not just about rural GP services. People felt disenfranchised because rural Ireland was being neglected. We had people protesting about the closure of post offices and Garda stations, schools decline, the loss of shops and pubs. Our campaign picked up on the unravelling of the fabric of rural society, which is to be regretted, but there is an inequality in the unravelling. We pay the same taxes but, unfortunately, we get a very unfair return and deficient services. Many speakers have spoken about the lack of infrastructure in rural Ireland, including broadband, mobile phone services, connectivity and rural transport services. It boils down to the fact that if there are no businesses in rural Ireland, there will be no people. There are knock-on effects of so many Government decisions, many of which are unintended consequences. In having an impact study the unintended consequences could be identified early and rectified.

I will concentrate on rural transport services, including Rural Link. There are 17 companies throughout Ireland which need to be funded in a flexible manner. Transport Infrastructure Ireland intends to bring uniformity to all Rural Link transport systems, many of which have to adapt to the geography and the people they serve. There is a need for flexibility in the way they are run and funded.

Employment is key to the sustainability of rural Ireland. We must encourage local enterprise offices, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland to get companies to set up in rural Ireland. As Deputy Peadar Tóibín mentioned, this has become a nation of city states. We are overheating the major cities, Dublin in particular, as can be seen in the price of housing, the lack of housing, the congestion and the social problems caused by all of these factors. We should be promoting the positivity associated with rural Ireland, the landscape, our culture and the quality of life in rural Ireland. We should be selling these to international companies which are finding that they cannot provide housing or infrastructure for their employees. It is about equality nationwide. One can go to many countries in Europe and not be aware of an inequality between town and country because they have rural-proofed their decisions and provided infrastructure to give equal opportunities. Ireland lacks that concept. We do not have a culture of supporting isolated and rural communities. We have to adapt our policies to take this into account. There is a vicious circle of decline in rural areas which we have to transform into a viable circle of growth. If we can encourage people to live and work in rural Ireland and provide the infrastructure needed, we can do that. We must implement the recommendations made in the CEDRA report, a wonderful report produced in 2014. Many of its recommendations have not been implemented, but Clare County Council has taken the lead and set up a rural development section. Perhaps other councils are doing the same, but as far as I know, it was the first council to do so. It has set up a rural development forum which has been meeting in the past few months. In June it will develop a rural development strategy for County Clare which we hope will act as a template for other county councils and which will look at strengths and weaknesses and develop rural development structures within the county. We will be looking for some funding from the Government to fund the provision of rural development officers who could concentrate on specific areas in the county which need viable rural development.

I have mentioned that Dublin is overheating. We can see it in every aspect of society. When Members leave Leinster House this evening, it will probably take them an hour to get as far as the M50. We have to look at rural Ireland in a completely different way. Rural-proofing of decisions is extremely important in the case of health services. We have centralised services in the past ten years under the heading of "reconfiguration". Reconfiguration made some sense when concentrating expertise in regional hospitals, but we have stripped county hospitals of viable services. There has been a failure to devolve services to such hospitals which could provide a huge number of services close to where people live and prevent them from having to travel constantly to centralised regional services. There are deficiencies in mental health services and also in the ambulance service. At times in County Clare one can wait two or three hours for an ambulance because of the lack of ambulance staff. As I said, we are in danger of becoming a country of city states. We need balanced regional development. It is no longer an optional extra but absolutely essential.

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