Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Rural parts of Ireland are in serious trouble. In many ways, we have a two-tier economy and society. We have been rudderless since 2002 without a spatial plan. Most of the economic activity is concentrating on the mid-east and greater Dublin region. Comparatively speaking, Dublin's dominance is significantly out of kilter. Its dominance economically and population-wise would be three or four times the dominance of London in Britain, for example. There is a significant danger that we are moving towards a city state, where more than 50% of the economic activity, taxes paid and population will be located in a small area. That city state will be surrounded by a national park of emptiness where, except for a few small perhaps regionally important urban areas, there will be no driving energy or critical mass to re-balance that lack of kilter. There will be no critical mass for cities to be able to attract investment or compete on an international basis. That is what has been missing from Government policy over the past number of years.

Teagasc has carried out research and identified that currently, only 37% of farmers in this State are independently economically viable. That is phenomenal. There are only approximately 140,000 farmers in the State and only a small cohort of them are making enough money to feed their family and pay their way themselves. We also have a major problem with energy in this country but we have not yet put the two issues together. For example, the importation every year by Bord na Móna of biomass worth millions of euro that could be produced here is a major mistake. The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, has not produced a feed-in tariff yet for farmers in rural parts of Ireland to produce small-scale solar, wind or bio-digesters and put energy into the system, reduce exports of fossil fuels and add money into their own pockets. It is unbelievable how slow the Government is. Most European countries did this ages ago. If up in the North four of five years ago, one would have seen solar panels on the roofs of houses that were feeding into the system and allowing people to contribute.

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