Michael Cahill (Kerry, Fianna Fail)

I urge the immediate initiation of a task force and I again call on the Government today to set that up with strong guidelines and short timelines to put the expertise of the hand-picked members to work as efficiently and quickly as possible to identify the many causes of depopulation and find solutions to it. In that news segment, south Kerry was highlighted not only by the Kerry county board demographics officer, Michael Murphy, but also by the south Kerry GAA board chairperson, Joe McCrohan, and of course one of the all-time great Kerry footballers from the region, Bryan Sheehan. South Kerry Iveragh is the perfect location for this task force on depopulation where the problem is most acute. Last November, I brought a delegation to Kerry County Council with the name "Three" to make a presentation. The causes are many and include housing and employment, but locally many more are at play. We need to have them identified, targeted and solved in as short a timespan as possible. I plead with the Government to set up this depopulation task force for south Kerry.

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