Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue. Most Deputies cannot hit the Minister too hard. One thing I can say about him is that if he has money he will spend it. The problem is that he has the biggest part of the country to look after but, unfortunately, his Department does not have the biggest budget.

Under the programme for Government in the past couple of years the local improvement schemes have been a great help to rural Ireland. The town and village scheme has done good things. The Minister has also taken an interest in the Tidy Towns. There are many volunteers involved. There are issues that have arisen at present but we must all address that together. Rural regeneration and the CLÁR programme have been good. All those schemes are doing good in various parts of the country. There might be a fight for them because there is not a big enough budget for them, but anywhere they have been implemented it has helped rural Ireland.

Many towns in the country are looking better, in fairness. Some towns have fallen back and we must find the reason for that.

The funding for the food hubs has been great. The Wild Atlantic Way and tourism ideas are welcome. If we are to solve the problems in rural Ireland, it will not be done solely by the Department of Rural and Community Development. The first thing for which the Minister should be given authority, and I would back it 100%, is for rural-proofing other Departments' decisions. The reason is that decisions made in other Departments can have catastrophic effects on rural Ireland and the Minister has no influence in respect of them.

We saw two weeks ago that small towns that are not connected to Irish Water do not have a community sewerage scheme. I ask that the Minister ensure funding is given, be it by his Department or some other Department, to those small towns, and we will back in 100% in that regard. The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government will not provide funding at the moment unless there is an Irish Water scheme in the town. Building will not be possible in those areas because of the restrictions imposed.

I have asked Minister before about a grant system for the towns with a population of 500 or less, and, in fairness, I know he is looking at it. Sometimes they feel left out if they do not receive anything when applications are made by the larger town. I ask the Minister to consider that.

LocalLink is a help in rural areas but another Minister brought in measures in the transport area which have brought in pubs in rural Ireland to their knees. I have said time and again that communities need to be given the option of buses or Uber, about which everybody is talking. If it is a one-horse town with one pub, the pub should get a rebate if it drops people home because the pub needs to survive and it is needed in the locality. In some villages, there might one pub and one shop and they are the heart of the community and keep it going.

It is very important we need to keep the small rural schools up and running. The measure we want to implement do not just concern the Minister's Department, and I will not find fault with him. What I am saying is that other Ministers must step up to the mark. If not, the Minister must be able to veto what they are doing. We know the population in parts of the country is getting older. Some of those people will need a one-bedroom house in a small village and that needs to be put in place. We also need to replace them with people and provide incentives. We need to look at a tax incentive to get people to live in rural Ireland. We need to look at rates for businesses and provide incentives to businesses to ensure they remain, even though they may not have the throughput found in other areas.

We have seen that TEN-T projects have not been implemented yet even though it is in the programme of Government. That is the job of the Minister, Deputy Ross, but he does not seem to know how to write to Europe about it.

On infrastructure, the new road from Dublin to Galway, with the extension to it, is a great road, and let no one deny that. We need a road to Letterkenny and to join the N5. The links need to be joined. The Cork to Mallow road needs to be done. The better the infrastructure, the more accessible the country becomes.

We need to ensure the broadband issue, which is the responsibility of another Minister, is resolved quickly. If the proposed carbon tax is brought in, it will affect the people in rural Ireland who are driving to work because there is no CIE bus, Luas, tram or all the lovely things one has in the big cities.

I hope we, in rural Ireland, are not paying the price in terms of the cost of the children's hospital. I refer to mental health services, daycare centres, hostels and the Rosalie unit in Castlerea and what was said about it today. We need to ensure the facilities in towns are kept in towns to give people opportunities.

Another Minister who has a part to play in terms of rural Ireland is the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The Minster, Deputy Ring, and I come from counties with many small farms. We see 80% of the money going to 20% of the farmers. A new Common Agricultural Policy is coming in and we need to ensure the family farm is protected. For those who have come out of the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, there is no environmental scheme to go into for at least another year or two years. This is the type of magic bullet that would help farm families to survive in rural Ireland instead of parents getting old and youngsters asking why they would farm because it does not pay.

We need to concentrate on the suckler herd and the beef to ensure we keep people on farms and encourage young farmers. As Deputy Scanlon pointed out at yesterday's meeting, we need to ensure we encourage youngsters back to the land and not back to a country where some parts of it are heading towards landlordism.

If people live on a road over which Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, is in control, they might as well throw their hat at trying to get planning permission. If they do not propose to exit the property using their parent's driveway, they have no hope at all. It is getting stickier to get planning permission for one-off houses. Someone has to call a halt to this.

We need water schemes. A three-year plan for group water schemes is being examined. I was in Galway the other day and was told there is no funding available until that three-year magic bullet, or plan, is brought forward. There must be money there for somebody who faces an emergency. There is nothing wrong with the new subsidies - I am not criticising them - but we need to ensure we are not wasting water in respect of upgrades.

There are housing problems in certain parts of the country which need to be addressed. The Minister must rural-proof the proposals of other Ministers because he comes from rural Ireland. Unfortunately, some people - maybe senior civil servants - do not understand there is more beyond the M50. There is a lovely part of the country which we call rural Ireland. One could not live or rear children in a better place. It is the best part of the world in which to live. There are things we do not have that others have. However, we can make it better by working together but we must understand how to make it better. During the discussions on the programme for Government, I emphasised that we need all Departments to listen to the Department of Rural and Community Development and to address the problems in rural Ireland. We will not solve it by going down the road we have travelled for the last 50 or 60 years. If we look at the figures and at the flight from the land, it tells its own story. We had 300,000 farmers in the 1970s, when the joined EU, but we have 130,000 farmers now. We need to ensure we make things attractive. In fairness to the Minister, he will do that if given the money, and I will back him 100%.

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