Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on the Department of Rural and Community Development's Our Rural Future plan. As someone from a rural, small-farming background, I am familiar with many of the issues facing those living and working outside the main urban centres. I am pleased my roles at three Departments each give me the opportunity to contribute something positive towards rejuvenating and helping maximise the potential of rural Ireland. At the Department of Rural and Community Development I oversee various community work strands, including the social inclusion and community activation programme, which is effectively hundreds of community workers in towns and villages across Ireland working with those in disadvantage and social isolation. Other strands within the remit of the Department include the community enhancement programme, community services programme and the empowering communities programme, which work in rural areas to help assist with everything from running the local community centre to delivering meals on wheels, to working with rural communities experiencing the impacts of extreme deprivation.

In my role at the Department of Social Protection, I oversee employment activation schemes, including, CE, Tús and the rural social scheme, RSS. These schemes are crucial to towns and villages across rural Ireland. The RSS in particular is one of the most powerful inclusion tools we have and it makes a hugely important link between small farmers and fishers, who are often living on the most marginal land in the country, and the community they live in. A review of the RSS is currently under way and we are hearing a wide range of voices on how we can refresh the RSS to support and prepare farming and fishing communities for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

In my role at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, I am working with community groups and workers to assist with the integration process of those arriving from Ukraine and other countries. Our rural towns and villages are finding themselves revitalised by a new, young population with new children in local schools that were at risk of becoming idle and small businesses finding themselves with a new pool of potential employees.

I have made it a point to travel to every county to visit community projects across the spectrum of my remit during my time in office and I am nearing the point when I will be able to say I have done so. On these visits I see the power of community development to bring people together and strengthening rural communities. This, combined with the work of my colleagues in other Departments is helping to reinvigorate rural Ireland and provide the framework for it to thrive. I acknowledge the work of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, in providing funding for additional biodiversity officers in every local authority and more National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, rangers. I acknowledge the work of the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, on organic farming. The number of organic farmers has doubled since we entered Government and it is important to flag the growth in rural public transport in recent years as well. Last year saw 37 new rural routes and we are going to be looking at 67 new rural routes this year. That number needs to increase every year as we go forward.

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