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

I would underline the national broadband roll-out and the Local Link expansion. On the broader issue of rural proofing, while I think this document is going to help when it is published, one of the strongest things we have in Government to help us rural-proof things is that we have a Department of Rural and Community Development. What that means, obviously, is there is a senior Minister at the table when issues come up. More importantly, in the background, what a lot of us do not see is that every Government memo is circulated to each Department and our officials have an opportunity to input the rural perspective into every significant Government decision. That happens in the background all the time. The Department was only established in 2017 but we are working on not just years but decades of Dublin-centric development. That is going to take time but the fact that we have a Government Department and a senior Minister at the table fighting for rural Ireland with regard to every decision is probably the most effective piece of rural proofing that we need to continue into the future.

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