Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister speaks of resilience. Rural communities are resilient; that is their nature. I am not being political in saying that permanent Government policies get in the way of that resilience and undermine it. We need a plan that encourages and fosters resilience and growth that is sustainable without being choked by various initiatives. I have been reflecting on the response of the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, in respect of the broadband connection points which are a key part of the national broadband plan and were being unveiled as its opening phase. Frankly, I do not see the capability for delivering 300 of them in 50 weeks. If we go for a year from the signing of the contract, we are looking at 50 weeks. We also spoke earlier about the services story, on which Deputy Aylward has a further question. There are so many programmes in rural Ireland. We need to define the basic level of service and adapt all those programmes to support the basic level of service and grow on it. A key part of this new plan must be an agreement on basic services that we will put in place and then adopt all the programmes to grow that basic level into sustainable communities.

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