Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to speak on this motion. The issues in rural Ireland are across all of our society but are particularly acute where people live in isolated areas and where they do not have the options they may have in other places. I note that when the Government brought in the relief for people in the form of the cost of living package, it talked a great deal about putting in place a measure to reduce the cost of public transport by 20%. That will make very little difference to people living in much of rural Ireland, particularly in places in the north west. When you go north of Sligo-Leitrim, there is not even a train. We needed to see focused measures. That is what always seems to be missing. This across-the-board approach where everybody will get the same amount of money shows a failure to understand the root cause of the problem. What we need to do is ensure that we target the measures to the people who need them most.

Across rural Ireland, many people are in real difficulty, particularly if they have to travel to work. They have the soaring cost of fuel and of heating oil, in particular, because that is the only option people in rural Ireland have to heat their home in many cases. Measures were introduced to retrofit homes in the past couple of days. In rural areas, it will be much more difficult to come up with solutions to all of that.

The issue we need to bring to the fore here is that we need to target the money to the people who need it most. Those are mainly working families - people who get up early in the morning and work hard trying to make ends meet to pay their mortgage, to pay their loans and to get a sense of future. That is what has been taken away from them. The Government needs to recognise that it needs to put money in place for all of the people, but particularly those who are most acutely affected and those in rural areas.

See this speech in context