Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Our Rural Future is a cross-government plan and a whole-of-government approach. It can be quite frustrating when we see reports, recommendations and reviews talking about the need for better interdepartmental working and a whole-of-government approach. It seems to be a standard criticism and recommendation of many reports.

I will focus on some of the justice issues which are relevant here. I appreciate that the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, was only Minister for Justice for a very brief period but nevertheless I look at things such as the local community safety partnerships. The policy highlights the pilot of the local community safety partnership in Longford. This has proved positive but we seem to be doing the perennial thing in this country of piloting interventions instead of actually investing in them. If we want people to live in rural Ireland and be the thriving vibrant, lived-in Ireland that the policy talks about then we need to fund things such as the local community safety partnerships. We cannot rely on pilots; we need to roll them out more. The number of gardaí has also been a major problem. As others have noted, there have been plenty of problems around services in rural Ireland and it is important to highlight that we need to step up and do more around adequate numbers of gardaí.

We not only need to keep people safe but they need to feel safe in order to have a thriving rural Ireland. But we also need to keep the land and environment in which people live safe so that they can have that life there. It is important to talk about how nature and farming can thrive together and how farmers can benefit from this. The agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, has been very successful in this. A commitment to a just transition has also been very successful. However, there is frustration sometimes that despite the lofty words here, particularly during the discussions on biodiversity loss, we have seen the same parties do the opposite in Europe around the nature restoration law.

It is the exact opposite in Europe when it comes to the nature restoration law. If we want that thriving, vibrant, lived-in rural Ireland, we need to ensure a future, not just for our people to keep them safe but to keep the land and the environment safe too.

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