Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to address two issues. The bus fleet of private operators has been in garages and off the road in recent months. They had been preparing to go back to providing the much-needed bus service for schools over the last weeks and have done so successfully. Some of those buses had been off the road since March and had not been taxed because the private operators did not know when the buses would be back on the road. To get them back on the road, they had to pay the road tax for the buses for the period going back to March. I think the regulation in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport states that they should have notified it first. We should zone in on that. Small initiatives like that will help some of the private operators. Something should be done for all the bus operators. I am sure that every Deputy in the House has operators in their own areas that need to be looked at. There should be an innovative way to help them so that they are not saddled with substantial road tax for a bus fleet that was in their garages and off the road over the last six or seven months. That is something small that should be looked at and dealt with.

There is a raft of sectors which are challenged with Covid and how we go forward. There was much discussion earlier in the debate about forestry. The Government needs to grapple with this and get the legislation through, to make sure that these felling licences, thinning licences and roadway applications are all streamlined and go through the Department as quickly as possible, with the least difficulty.

There also has to be a review of the entire planning process to make sure that planning is not held up by fictitious objections and that there is serious review of the planning laws. They have been added to many times over the years and it is time for a review. Another issue that has come to the fore concerns community centres that have been operating, paying insurance and complying with the law despite having no income for the past six months. There should be a very sincere, targeted way of getting funding to all the community centres run by voluntary organisations and we should make sure that these valuable centres will be used again in the future, post-Covid, whenever that may be. We need to make sure these community centres are kept viable and are open for business.

We have to look at innovative ways of dealing with the various sectors. There are great challenges and myriad issues. The Government has to look at them carefully in order to streamline them. We have to accept that with Covid over the last six months, as always, the public is about 20 steps ahead of the political system and the Government. Many people have relocated and many are working from home in rural communities. This is a dream that was being talked about by rural Deputies for many years. It is now happening and we have to embrace that and make sure that everything is put in place for it to continue. Working from home has enhanced the vibrancy of rural communities over the last while. We have seen that they are safe and the issues in respect of large urban centres and Covid.

We have to look at this issue. Many years ago, we were talking about decentralisation. Now is the time for a major programme of decentralisation. We need to make sure we embrace it. We talk about carbon and all the rest of it. This is an issue that ticks every box we have been debating in the last while. It ensures that rural communities can thrive and enhances them, keeping young people in their own communities. Many people are commuting to Dublin from all over the place, some for two and three hours. That is not sustainable for the individuals involved, their families and their lifestyle. There should be coherent thinking about how we face the future. We should embrace a massive decentralisation programme and rejuvenate and sustain rural communities. They are vibrant and able to do it. We have seen what they have done over the last six months. We should now challenge the State and ensure it embraces what people have done over the last months.

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