Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What makes the team great all-Ireland champions is that the vast majority of the people see their loyalty as being to the geographic area of the parish. It has nothing to do with religion and is defined in a territorial sense far beyond the little village of Corofin in Clare, which is extraordinarily small. We must recognise therefore what rural Ireland is and that should be reflected in our planning policies.

I hear complaints perennially about ribbon development. If one reads The Irish Timesand so on, one sees that. Most ribbon development, funnily enough, is caused by the huge expansion of the cities which people are forced to live in or near. They do not want to live physically within the city and build endless houses in the adjacent countryside. In other words, it is an urban generated problem, not a rural one. If we move away from the areas influenced by the cities, the countryside could accommodate in visual terms, if we adopted our planning policies, the rural need for permanent housing. Our planning system is flawed in particular in relation to one-off houses because as far back as the 1990s, there was an obsession with road frontage and linearity. Thankfully, in some places people have managed to build in the folds of the hills and along the contours of the land in an unobtrusive way. It is a way that is in keeping with the natural pattern in the countryside previously and that can sustain the population without destroying the countryside visually. I am not in favour of the status quoin planning and of ribbon development. I am not in favour of the pull to the centre which means there is overcrowding of houses within a ten-mile radius of every city just as the cities themselves are a total housing nightmare. These are not rural problems, however. They are generated by urban areas.

I believe in rural Ireland. It is relatively easy to create jobs there. I have some experience of doing so. I live in a rural community that is in fact quite healthy in population and structural terms. I have believed since the first day I got involved in development work as a co-operative manager in 1974 that the most important thing for rural development was basic infrastructure. It is not a matter of a grant here or there. It is amazing to think that in 1974 we were trying to get a copper telephone line. What we urgently need for the 500,000 houses that do not have it now is fibre broadband. I have made my views on this absolutely clear at the committee. There is nothing in any known technology or that is likely to be there in the short to medium term to match fibre. There is no contention and much greater security. Listening to people talking about this, they do not seem to realise that Eir has already brought fibre to virtually every village in Ireland and a mile out the road in every direction. To start back at base again to try to construct a parallel system would be ridiculous. This is not rocket science. It is very simple. As the Minister of State knows, but what is important to record, is that Eir comes along and finds poles already in place because at one time 95% of houses had a landline phone. All the poles are there outside all the houses. Eir checks the poles to see if they are still up to standard and it replaces them if they are not. If it did not do it now, it would have to do it at some point in future. In fact, it is quite a good thing that this audit of all poles nationally is taking place. It will mean storm damage will be greatly mitigated. As the Minister of State knows, Eir hangs on the tops of these poles, alongside the copper, a little bit of fibre that is the weight of a feather. If the line was ducted, they duct it as well. It is as simple as that. There is no need for new ducting and it is 100% on the existing system. We need broadband and we need it now. There must be no more shillyshallying.

We need decent roads built to a pre-determined standard of surface, camber, curvature and width. Any upgrading of roads should be to these standards and the standards should vary according to whether it is a primary, national secondary or regional route or a tertiary road. We must have a proper long-term roads programme. We need water in every house. If those basics are provided, the economy will grow. We always talk about the IDA when we talk about jobs. Let us park it for a minute and look at the quick wins. The first win is decentralisation which is totally within our own control. The second win is localisation of services and the jobs that go with them instead of constantly drawing all services, including health services, into the centre, which is very unfair to the people who need them. I hope to speak more about primary care later tonight.

There are many things to talk about so I will move quickly to public transport. On buses alone, never mind trains, expenditure per capitain rural Ireland is less than one third of that in urban Ireland. That needs to be levelled. We need frequent services along the main routes to our towns and cities where the employment is. We must end the discrimination in fares. We have a ridiculous situation whereby if one gets the train to Sallins the fare is half of the fare to get to the next station in Newbridge. That situation is replicated nationally. This is simply because one is considered an urban fare while the other is considered to be a rural fare. We need equality of treatment in rural Ireland and cannot accept less. It blows my mind that we have not provided frequent rapid rail services on the existing railway lines, open and closed, into the major cities of Waterford, Limerick and Galway. I know the Minister of State is with me on that. I acknowledge that a plan has been developed and published for Cork. People wonder why no one takes the train from Nenagh to Limerick or from Clonmel to Waterford to get to work in the morning. I ask those who live in Dublin how many of their neighbours would take the DART if the first services to Connolly, Pearse and Grand Canal stations arrived at 10 a.m. and there was only one train in the evening which meant that, if one missed it to go for a pint with friends, one would have to walk home.

We have created a situation that we then use as an excuse for not providing a service because we say it has no patronage.

On jobs, I also wish to say we have huge natural resources, we have tourism and we have home working, which will become one of the boom industries where many people will work where they choose and choose where they go to live.

With the indulgence of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle who might give me another 35 seconds, can I say that climate change is normally cited as a reason for not allowing people to settle in rural Ireland. If that was followed to an extreme we would close down our international tourism industry because people would have to get either a boat or a train and we encourage people to go to the most far parts of our country. However, the reality is that with the electrification of vehicles, because rural people can generate much more electricity in their homes through solar or wind power, they could become much more carbon neutral and even become carbon contributors in the future, which is not something most urban people will ever be able to say.

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