Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is correct. I did not get the chance to publish the new policy on rural Ireland, although I have it ready and I want to put on the record that I am hopeful that I will publish it in the next fortnight. When I was drawing up that new policy, one of the big issues I looked at was the pilot scheme I carried out for towns and villages. We picked six towns and villages and we gave €100,000 to each local authority. We asked them to have consultations with the chambers of commerce, the community groups and anybody who was involved in any kind of commercial activity or in the community and to come back with some ideas to see what we could do about the public realm and the dereliction we have in some towns and villages. Two big issues came back.

Governments never like to hear about grants, but whether we like it or not, whoever comes into government will have to provide a grant scheme for people to do up derelict buildings in a town to make the buildings available. I know some people talk about the importance of renting, but it does not matter if these buildings are made available for sale or for renting, once somebody is in these properties. I was proposing to the Government that we should try to get a grant scheme through to do that. Local authorities will have to use the Derelict Sites Act 1990 and they will have to use it more often. There are properties in towns and villages that the local authorities know are there and nobody knows who owns them. Those properties have to be taken in and used by the local authorities.

The Deputy talked about the 5 km limit and I cannot disagree with him. I have spoken about this issue and raised it. There is a difference between 5 km in an urban area and 5 km in a rural area. I hope that now that we are coming into phase 2 of the lockdown, we will see changes, but the Deputy is quite correct. The whole lockdown has been hard on people, particularly on elderly people who have been cocooning and have not been able to get out of their homes. Even walking 3 km or 5 km is not simple and it is something the Government is looking at. We have a Cabinet meeting this week, I have already highlighted that issue and I hope decisions will be made to help that situation. There has been a lot more movement in the past week. People have been good and patient and it has been difficult on people. There is no point in pretending otherwise and I do not mind saying that I found it difficult. What I miss most is meeting and talking to people. It is difficult, as the Acting Chairman knows, when one has spent one's whole life going around talking to people and meeting people and all of a sudden that stops.

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