Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all my colleagues, including Deputy O'Rourke and others from rural constituencies, who have worked on bringing this motion forward. As others, across parties, have said, it was a shock to read the national development plan and realise that the map Deputy Mac Lochlainn talked about was not going to change. I thank all the other speakers. I have listened intently to everybody's contribution and rarely has there been such consensus across the House on what we need to do.

We have to examine who is in the Government and who has the ability to deliver the things we have agreed on tonight. I appeal to Deputies within the Government to go back to the heads of their parties and make them understand they are the ones elected to this House. Senior civil servants with pens and paper are not elected to this House. We are the people who are accountable to those who vote for us across the constituencies. The key pieces of infrastructure we talked about form the vision for rural Ireland. They are the catalyst for development and are the things we need. There are wonderful, bright people across the board in rural Ireland. We talked about some of them tonight, such as Monsignor Horan, who Deputy Calleary referred to, in addition to Micheál MacGréil, Colmán Ó Raghallaigh and many others in businesses and communities throughout rural Ireland who share the vision and commitment to making rural Ireland, and the entire country, work for us all, but they are being blocked. We need to unblock what is happening and we need to challenge the analysis that is sometimes presented to us, whether it is from an auditor or a senior civil servant. We need to show people who is in charge here. All of the Deputies know that we can make a cost-benefit analysis say whatever we want it to. Depending on the criteria we use, we can predict the outcome. The population-led cost-benefit analysis being used across the board will just not work for rural Ireland in terms of the investment decisions that need to be made.

People in rural Ireland want to do their bit for climate change. In fact, they want to do more than their bit. They want to be leaders in climate change, whether it is through wind or wave energy, or many other things, but we cannot do it unless we are given the basic infrastructure, such as public transport. The Atlantic economic corridor task force sets out a vision for us all on where we need to be and the potential that is there but, again, it cannot do it without the key infrastructure we need. That is why many of these communities and businesses know that this Government is out of touch with how they think, and with what they want and need to make their areas work. They want more than launches, brochures and photos and, post Covid, they expect to have more than that delivered for them.

The western rail corridor is a shovel-ready project, having had ten years of very hard work put into it. The report forwarded by Dr. John Bradley concluded all that work. It makes sense economically, socially and from a climate change perspective in terms of freight, passengers and what we want to deliver for the west. The vast majority of politicians across this House agree it needs to be delivered. We need to address the implementation deficit and we need to get it delivered. That would really show the Government intends to listen to people in rural Ireland and the west. I again ask this Government to go back, look at the western rail corridor and deliver it along with the other key infrastructure projects that have been talked about tonight.

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