Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have not done it yet, so first I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and wish him the very best in his role. In his statement earlier today, the Minister said the Bill had just one purpose, which is to establish the Department and to confer a name. However, it is so much more in terms of its resonance in every single aspect of rural life, for which the Minister has a huge grá and appreciation. I want to explore that here today.

There was a huge amount of debate earlier today on rural Ireland. People spoke about attacks on rural Ireland and what needs to be done to save rural Ireland. Listening to some of the contributions earlier this morning, there was a variance of views on how to accomplish what everyone was supposed to be talking about. There was even a suggestion that we could save rural Ireland by building a stadium in the west of Ireland, as if one physical edifice would save it and that this would be all encompassing. It missed the point totally.

I contributed to the Oireachtas committee on rural affairs when it came to Athboy where I have my constituency office. We spoke about what was needed in terms of a strategic approach. The national strategic planning framework is extremely important because of the focus on planning. People think that my home county of Meath is a big and populated county where everything is going well and everything is great but we are living in a two-tier county. All the development is happening in the south of the county on the Dublin border but the recent census figures show that there has been depopulation in the north of the county. In the town of Oldcastle, one of the thriving market towns of the past 50 years, the most recent census figures show there was depopulation. Everything that the Deputies in the Chamber are speaking about in terms of why services then go, whether they be banks or other commercial services, is determined by where the population centres are located. My point is that if the planners, who nearly act like mini-gods, are given the opportunity andcarte blanche to centre our populations in certain regions, it will put in train a scenario for years and decades to come in which these towns die because they are not being repopulated. That is why I am adamant that if we do not get this particular national planning document right in terms of giving counties a chance to survive - and I mean the entire county and not just the greater Dublin area, which is where the focus seems to be - it will kill them in the years to come. We have to give those counties an opportunity.

In terms of co-ordination of services, I recently met communities in Ballinabrackey and Castlejordan in the south of County Meath. Those towns are right down on the border with County Offaly. They could not be more isolated from my home town of Navan and it takes nearly an hour to get to them. Their nearest Garda station is in Trim, which is 40 minutes away, yet one could cycle a bike to Rhode just across the county border. They feel isolated in terms of the co-ordination of all State services, be they Garda, hospital or fire services.

Another aspect is child care. It is a hot topic in this Chamber but it has an impact in respect of the Minister's Department as well in the context of supporting the existing facilities in our counties. No disrespect to the services that are operating in the west - the best of luck to them - but when I consider counties such as County Leitrim, which is very well subsidised when it comes to the provision of child care services, and then consider my county, which has a population of 190,000, the capitation figures bear no resemblance in terms of the pressures that they are under. We need to consider all these things in the whole and not just consider what are viewed as traditional rural counties. As I said, we are now developing a two-tier county in my native county of Meath, where the provision of services in the north of the county is more aligned to that in Cavan. Then we consider the south of the county, which is coming within the greater Dublin area. It is not a healthy situation and we should not allow it to be fuelled or developed. It is striking that there can be depopulation in what is supposedly one of the commuter counties. The only thing that will address it is to make sure these counties are given a fair crack in this planning document.

If the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government is allowed a free rein on this and unless the Minister's Department and other Departments place a heavy hand on it and say we want an Ireland that exists outside of the greater Dublin region or we will overheat it, we will kill all the services in the other areas. The decisions that will be taken on this critical document could be the ones that kill communities and commercial services for years to come. I appeal to the Minister not to let the Custom House have a free hand on this. The county development plans have now become subservient to the regional plans and the regional plans will be subservient to this. If the Custom House is allowed to run this through roughshod, it will kill the rural Ireland we all know and love and towns such as Oldcastle in County Meath will not have a chance because of these decisions.

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