Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

On numerous occasions over the past 12 months many Members from this side of the House have called for a debate on the Border, midlands and western region and the worsening imbalance in investment. The report published this week, Rural Ireland 2025 — Foresight Perspectives, endorses everything that has been said on this issue. Last week the Government compounded this imbalance with the publication of Transport 21, which indicated the imbalance of infrastructure investment in favour of the east and south. The rural Ireland report cries out for the west to be saved. We have said it time and again and the Government has not listened.

Everybody should read the editorial in today's edition of The Irish Times which outlines Government inaction on western development and the absence of genuine policies to save the west. If we are to have only 10,000 full-time commercial farmers by 2025, we must highlight the failure of a Government with plenty of money that does nothing but pay lip-service in the intervening period. The Dublin agencies and groups that pontificate on how the west should be developed must be made to realise that the west is dying, that the problem is spreading to Munster and Ulster and that——