Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As an urban Deputy, I am obviously very conscious that I do not have the day-to-day experience of what is happening in rural Ireland. In that regard, I have to rely to a large extent on insights from those whose judgment I trust. As a result, some of what I will say will reflect what I have heard from people who are living in rural Ireland and who have particular views about what is going on there. Other things are slightly more general observations; I start with one of those.

First, it is important for people who live in urban areas to recognise that we have an interest in not seeing the underdevelopment, the degradation or the depopulation of rural Ireland. It is important to stress that, but people living in urban areas may not agree. It might not seem very immediate to them, but, in fact, the excessive concentration of population and of all the pressures on infrastructure, housing, services and so on, in a very small area around Dublin and some of the other big cities is bad for everybody. It is bad for rural Ireland and for urban Ireland. We all have an interest in balanced regional development, even to address the things that are affecting us right now whether it is housing, the pressure on housing prices, rents and so on.

The second point is that there is a narrative that suggests otherwise, namely, that there is an urban-rural divide and that one gains and the expense of the other. It is just coincidental that shortly after this debate I am due to attend a meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight at which - it has to be said at my suggestion, but fair play to the committee for taking it up - Oxfam is going to make the case for a wealth tax. Some very interesting background papers that are relevant to the debate we are having here have been produced. Those produced by the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, and my committee's secretariat, and reinforced by Oxfam, start with the gross and growing inequality in the distribution of wealth in Ireland. They show, for example, that the top 10% households own 47% of all of the wealth. There is a massive and growing concentration of the wealth in the hands of a relatively small percentage of the population. That is interesting because there is also a geographical aspect to this which is very stark. Some 55% of net wealth is located in the eastern and midland areas.

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