Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to address the Minister. I wish her the best of luck in what is a challenging Department. I think the acronym relating to her new Department will include every letter of the alphabet. I wish her and the Aire Stáit the very best of luck.

11 o’clock

I will turn to the Aire Stáit initially to say that the communities across the Gaeltacht are deeply disappointed that the Gaeltacht portfolio has been sellotaped on to what is already a very large Department. As the Minister knows first hand, the Gaeltacht population is declining. It is an ageing demographic and that is even more challenging when we look at na hoileáin where we have similar problems. This needs to be looked at right across Government.

When I held the portfolio of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, I was very focused on bringing high-speed broadband to the islands and rural communities and on ensuring that they should not be left behind. It will transform those islands.

Against the advice at the time, I included the offshore islands as part of the clean energy for EU islands strategy, and that will directly benefit them, providing sustainable clean energy to them. There is a great opportunity in servicing the offshore renewable industry from the Gaeltacht areas and the islands but Údarás na Gaeltachta needs to be supported now to be proactive rather than reactive in that regard. Again, that is an area that had completely fallen by the wayside until I resurrected the offshore renewable strategy, and in fairness, through persistence at Cabinet level, the leadership was taken on by the office of An Taoiseach. I hope that this Government actually delivers on the objectives that I set out in my time in that Department.

I also ask the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, if he could provide our new Aire with a copy of the Western Development Commission report, the Creative West report. While it is a decade old at this stage, I think the Minister will find great benefit in reading it in terms of the potential economic stimulus that exists regarding creating jobs, particularly in our rural communities and regions in the creative, arts and culture sector. I hope the Minister takes the opportunity to review that document.

There are two other issues I wish to bring up, one of which is close to the heart of the Minister's Secretary General, namely, the ban on hedge cutting. I am not going to go into that heated debate. As the Minister knows, the ban on hedge cutting applies from 1 March to 31 August. At long last, by 1 March of next year, we are going to have high-speed broadband outside people's homes. They will be offered up to 500 Mbps as a standard offering from about 1 March next year. The last thing we need when that broadband arrives outside people's homes is for them to be told that because of the Minister's Department, they cannot connect as they have to remove a tree or cut down a hedge between the telegraph pole on the road and their house. I ask the Minister to make contact with National Broadband Ireland, find out the exact specification needed for householders and circulate it to householders so that from 31 August of this year they can start preparing for that broadband. If they have to trim back trees and hedges, they could then do it between August and March of next year rather than waiting until the broadband arrives at their door and then have a delay of up to six months on that. It is about bringing logic into this issue rather than creating a problem next spring.

On the final issue I want to raise, the Minister might respond to me if she has the figures available to her. I am going to give her a bit of history. Back in 1996, the then Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins, provided for the designation of bogs which led to the ban on turf cutting on a number of designated bogs across the west. Twenty-four years later, about one in ten of those families that looked for it has been relocated. A massive 70% of those turf cutters who sought relocation are still without any plan to provide them with an alternative turf bank. The first test of the just transition is the relocation of those turf cutters who had their rights removed from them 24 years ago. At the formation of the previous Government in May 2016, 68 turf cutters had been accommodated on alternative sites. At the end of last year, that had risen to 72 families relocated. That is four families in four years or one relocation a year, which is grossly inadequate. Because this has been so frustrating and delayed for so long, in the meantime the Minister's Department has paid €1,500 per annum to those families until they are relocated. About 8% of those families have thrown in the towel and said they will allow the Department to buy out their rights. However, in a sneaky move by the Department, it is deducting the payments that have already been made for the Department's failure to relocate them from the compensation payment that is being paid. Can we issue these people with their rightful compensation payment and not deduct the payments that were made to them in the interim in lieu of relocation?

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