Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I stand corrected by my colleague. It happened during the term of office of a previous Government. I will refrain from mentioning which Government happened to be in power at the time, but I do remember it. My memory is not that bad.

There was a large list of closures of facilities all over the country. The Opposition nowadays is jumping up and down, howling with indignation about the closure of post offices, schools, libraries and other services in rural Ireland. They were identified, pursued and closed then and nothing at all was said about it. It does no harm occasionally to review where we came from, where we were, and who made the proposals at that particular time. We can revisit that subject at any time.

We have to move on from there, however, and improve ourselves and we are in the throes of doing that now. We have options when it comes to this legislation. We can walk away from it, but what is the message then? The message to the young people of the country would be wrong. The message to people who dare to drink and drive irresponsibly and recklessly would also be wrong. I would not be happy to give that message now, because by doing so we would be contributing to the sorrow and hardship caused to families in urban and rural Ireland by someone driving while over the limit. In those circumstances, we as legislators have no option other than to support the legislation. We have to balance the issues and decide of what we are in favour.

On the totality of the issues that affect rural Ireland and the country in general and how this legislation is likely to impact on it, there is no doubt that it will have a different impact on rural Ireland compared to the cities. There is no question about that. Members have said that things are different in the country, and that is true. There are longer distances to travel and a greater degree of isolation. It is possible to be isolated in urban settings as well, but the difference is fundamental. On the one hand, we have the legislation and, on the other, we can say that we are not in favour of curtailing drink-driving. That would be a very strange message. If we send that message from this House, we would be doing ourselves a great disservice, notwithstanding all of the things that need to be dealt with or the issues that people on the opposite side of the House and some on this side have spoken about.

Regardless of the outcome, we need to look very carefully at the issues which affect rural Ireland, including transport, culture, social life and the need to ensure that people are attracted to living in rural Ireland in the future. We cannot just draw a line on the map and say that one will be fine if he or she is fortunate enough to live inside that line, or that if one lives in a city, he or she will be fine and, if not, things will be different. Incidentally, we all hear from time to time about how the Government has neglected rural Ireland. Rural Ireland has been on the decline for quite a long time, and it is up to us to realise that, de-politicise that situation and attempt to do something about it by way of providing Garda stations and post offices, dealing with the decline of the population, and dealing with the area of planning. The issue in greatest need of improvement is planning.

We can legislate in this area so that there will be a population in rural Ireland in the future and people will wish to live there because the services they need will be there and will be on par with the services available elsewhere in the country and overseas.

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