Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Some counties have spent a lot of their money on LEADER projects. A roll-over is needed and money is required for next year and the year after because the next Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, will be in 2023. I ask the Minister to prioritise that issue. I know from my engagement with people in Roscommon earlier in the week that that is a problem.

Broadband is welcome but we need to see it rolled out. The Minister comes from a rural area, as do I. If one is making cocks of hay in a field, the more people in the field, the quicker they will be made. We need to roll out extra people, as it were, although I know there are problems in that regard at the moment.

On mobile phone coverage, the current providers are basically giving the two fingers to a lot of people in rural Ireland. I welcome the town and village renewal scheme. It has helped. We can give out about measures but we also need to recognise initiatives such as rural regeneration. The more of that, the better for us all. There is a particular matter that I would ask the Minister to raise at Cabinet. I know from my engagement with different councils that there are issues with regard to the assessment of roads. The Minister and every other Deputy here knows that new roads are very important because we do not have adequate public transport. Some of the people in the Green Party might wish to live in a dream world. We will never have sufficient public transport such that we have only to put out a hand at our houses and a bus will stop and pick us up. In terms of the road analysis that is being done, they are making it harder to build roads. I ask the Minister to raise that issue at Cabinet.

I want to raise the issue of sewerage schemes under the previous Government, which was not the remit of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys. In the counties where Irish Water does not provide services in a town there are group water schemes, especially in the west. If Irish Water does not supply the water to a county, it will not support a sewerage scheme. This needs to be addressed. I spoke to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, about this a week ago and I spoke to one of his officials. They are aware of the situation. I hope they will come back with a solution. Previously a grant of €6,000 per house was available and people in the area would put in place the scheme and run it, probably more efficiently than anybody else.

Ballinasloe has water, broadband and sewerage services. It has everything going for it, including a motorway. There is a need for a task force in towns like that to bring them on. I would live nowhere else than rural Ireland. It is the best place to live and bring up a family. For all its faults and all of the criticisms of this, that and the other, I would not give it up for the world, in particular the tranquility. The old houses that were closed up in rural areas are being snapped up at the moment. We need greater positivity, to put in place the infrastructure, to get the meitheal going and to address the problems in the line of sewerage and so on and we will make it better yet.

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