Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The Minister's speech was from the heart. The programme for Government states vibrant rural communities are vital to the future of our nation. I am sure every Member will speak with enthusiasm for this.

Like the Minister, I do not come from a rural background but no one is more than two generations from the country. My mother came from County Armagh where I used to spend my summers as a child. I accept there were difficulties and we were deprived then but there were many positive aspects to our rural communities.

Senator Labhrás Ó Murchú referred to those who acted for rural communities in the past such as Monsignor James Horan, Canon John Hayes and Fr. James McDyer. I recently met Fr. Brophy, who has done something similar in Graiguecullen, County Carlow. I was invited down to speak at a novena, which involved nine days of prayer every Monday for nine weeks. The church was packed. There was benediction, which I had not attended for years — it does not happen in our church — and we sang "Tantum Ergo" and some of the old Latin hymns. It reminded me of the sort of rural community that existed in the past. I raise this point because I believe we will solve this problem only if those in the rural communities do something for themselves. It is not the job of the Government to solve this problem; it is the job of individuals. The job of the Government, as the Minister said earlier, is to allay the situation and make support available so that when people need help to do something, it is there for them. I am sure FÁS is doing something like that.

I have had the opportunity to visit India. Senator Ó Murchú was correct when he spoke about the situation outlined by the Irish Rural Dwellers Association. It pointed out that in 1926, 68% of the population in Ireland were rural dwellers whereas the figure is now 33%. The Minister has just given a figure of 70% for India. Having visited India, I know there is no way that we want to see a population having to live as those in India do, but while they may be very poor, there was a joy in the way of life in the rural community.

I ask myself what we can do, how the Minister can contribute and what will happen. I would also like to address the question of efficiency versus social or, better still, cultural benefits, a term used by the Minister. The areas we are talking about here are the church, which I touched on earlier, and the schools. It was interesting to hear the point made by Senator Buttimer on class sizes, which are too large in the cities and probably too small in the countryside to be efficient. However, we can now rely on other situations. We must find a way to ensure broadband and other developments are introduced. I spoke the other day to a man who lives in a rural area. His daughter is doing a fourth level MBA course with Madrid University from home, 20 hours a week, although I am not sure how she manages it. This is possible but we are very far behind with broadband and must find a solution.

When we talk about efficiency versus social benefit, it is likely we will lose the smaller schools because they do not make sense in the long term. However, there are other ways of supporting that area. We are losing rural shops to a large extent, which I can understand as the marketplace is driving people to the larger supermarkets. There is a danger we are losing the rural pubs as well for various reasons. Much as I regret it, we are likely to continue to lose local Garda stations because it is much more efficient to have them in other locations, although we can battle against this.

I wish to deal particularly with the issue of post offices. I have some experience in this area as I was chairman of the interim board for four years and then of An Post itself for six years. Clearly, our objective was to ensure the post office provided a service but also that it made money and was able to break even or be profitable. While I argued very strongly that this should happen, I question the wisdom of suggesting that the only function of rural post offices is to be profitable and make money. It was interesting to read during the week the argument of the Irish Postmasters Union, which stated it was forming an alliance of other social organisations in this area to argue the case.

When debating the issue of post offices in the House last November, I stated:

We will only solve the problem when we face up to the reality that the post office retail network cannot be justified in purely business terms. We must recognise that rural post offices are a crucial part of a social framework and are vital to our society in a way that they can never be as part of An Post ... To lose the network of remaining rural post offices forever would be nothing short of a national tragedy ... It is inevitable that such will happen as long as we insist on regarding the question in purely business terms. If one expects An Post to pay its way, the death of the post offices is inevitable. If one regards the post offices as performing an important social service that one wishes to preserve, the way to do it is clear, namely, one must support the post offices by a national subvention quite apart from the business revenue that An Post can raise from the network. As a nation, we can only preserve our post offices if we are prepared to pay for them. Are we prepared? We should focus our attention on answering this question.

We will not easily solve the problem of the shops, the pubs, the schools and the Garda stations but we can solve the problems for rural post offices if we can change their attitude so that, to use the Minister's words, they are not aiming solely at efficiency but are aiming at the cultural and social benefits we get from them.

Senator Ó Murchú referred to the Irish Rural Dwellers Association and its concern with the planning situation regarding single houses. The Irish planning Acts were developed back in the 1960s but they were based on the United Kingdom model of urban and town planning, as I believe it is called. We must examine this model. I did not see the television programme referred to today but one of the questions we must address is whether our system of planning is correct and whether the decisions are being made by elected or unelected people, and those who are part of the rural community or those who have a different agenda.

I encourage the Minister's enthusiasm. We are delighted to see him in his current role. We must give him support. While I question some of the decisions that have been made in the past, with proper decision making we can change the situation in rural areas.