Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

By the way, the Deputy forgot to mention the Dursey cable car. He had plenty of talk about it when it was not working but it is working now. It was reopened last week by his brother. I am delighted to see the Dursey cable car is back up and running. It is very important. I would also like to say thank you to Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan because in fairness to the fella, he came to me about that issue, and we worked hard on it together. I just want to put that on the record too.

In fairness, I want to recognise the positive and constructive contributions from many of the Deputies this evening. The issue of the local improvement scheme, LIF, was raised with me. If I have extra money, Deputies can rest assured that I will be putting it into the lanes because I know what it is like to have lanes with holes that the milk or meal lorry cannot get up. I know all about that.

There was a common recognition of the huge level of funding going into communities and, indeed, community-based projects through schemes like the CLÁR programme, the town and village scheme, LEADER and the community centre fund. I want to recognise the work of the volunteers on the ground and say a huge thank you because we all know them. We could not do this work without the community volunteers who day in, day out put their heads above the parapet many times. They achieve a huge amount. I really want to say a huge thank you to them.

My policy has always been to support the bottom-up approach. I see my role as Minister to help communities realise their ambition for their area. That is a number one priority. It is seeking to help people on the ground have a better quality of life with more jobs and more people living and working in rural Ireland. Deputies raised a number of issues beyond the remit of my Department. Our Rural Future is a whole-of-government policy, and I will be taking up the issues with the relevant Departments and Ministers in due course.

Finally, I want to recognise that our Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, set up the Department of Rural and Community Development in 2017 as a stand-alone Department. He appointed Deputy Ring as the first Minister. I acknowledge the great work of Deputy Ring during his tenure in the Department. It is my honour to build on the foundations he laid. I am glad to hear that we got through this whole debate without one person saying rural Ireland is dying. I can tell Members it is alive and well and that was a tired old narrative. It does not reflect the reality on the ground. What is more, it does an injustice to the community groups who are working so hard to make their areas a better place. I will leave it at that. As I said, rural Ireland is a better place to invest, work, live and raise a family.

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