Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the demise of rural Ireland are greatly exaggerated. I was born and raised in rural Ireland as were many previous generations of my family. I remain living there. Yes, there are still issues that we need to face up to and resolve and they are going to require investment and commitment. However, every time I go home to rural east Galway I sense nothing but vibrancy, energy and a genuine sense of ambition and vision as to how our rural communities develop in the future. That has been the very core and essence of the work that is being done by the Department of Rural and Community Development, established by Fine Gael, first led by the then Minister, Deputy Ring very ably and now led equally ably by the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien. That has allowed us to develop an extraordinary sense of partnership between Government and local communities across the country. Local communities know exactly what they want to do in terms of developing facilities and employment opportunities, and they are presenting these to their local authority initially and then onwards to the Department.

I will say a word about those community and enterprise sections within our local authorities. I am speaking in particular from my own experience of working with the team in Galway County Council. They are doing incredible work, much of it without any praise or recognition, very much under the radar. They are doing it without sufficient resources in terms of staff in particular. Many people see their local authority basically as a provider of roads, water infrastructure, and wastewater infrastructure. They do not see that it has an economic development remit. Certainly within Galway County Council they take that remit very seriously indeed. I refer to the recent investment by the US company Dexcom in the town of Athenry in rural east Galway. Galway County Council's community enterprise department had a huge role to play in partnering with IDA Ireland and making the case for the very significant investment in Athenry, creating more than 1,500 jobs over the next number of years. That sense of partnership between communities, their local authority and the Department is really important and needs to be nurtured and developed in the future.

If I may make a suggestion, there are an extraordinary number of helpful, effective and impactful grant schemes emanating from the Department, to such an extent that it can cause quite a bit of confusion at times as to what exactly the schemes can and cannot support. I suggest the Department might partner with each of our local authorities in offering an annual once-off workshop for community groups from across the local authority area to come in, perhaps to visit their local authority, and hear directly from it what schemes are available, how they can access them and how they can develop that sense of partnership with their local authority in the future.

See this speech in context