Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The Budget Statement outlined that we will have completed 6,000 out of 10,000 by 2011. If we had announced 6,000 the first day, it would still have been the largest decentralisation programme ever. Perhaps we overshot somewhat; so be it. Decentralisation is one of the great dynamic drivers in rural Ireland. I do not subscribe that we should have decentralised to the gateway towns because they were growing anyway.

Luaigh an Seanadóir Ó Murchú an tábhacht a bhaineann le cúrsaí B&B. Tá sé thar a bheith spéisiúil breathnú a dhéanamh ar na mná tí atá ag coinneáil na nGaeilgeoirí. Tá na daoine atá ag plé le B&B i bhfad níos sine ná na mná tí.

The bed and breakfast sector has a major role to play but it must change its game. The idea of passing trade for bed and breakfast is dead. Rural recreation, activities and bringing guests to the bed and breakfast for a week is important. That is why mná tí work so well. The guests are there for three weeks, the house is full, there is money to be made and the standards are very high. There is also co-ordination with someone else who is filling the house. We must become more sophisticated. I try to encourage an industry of rural leisure, rural recreation, marine leisure, leisure on lakes and every kind of group coming, including artists. People could organise to fill the house of the bed and breakfast so that the owner would not be waiting for someone to pass, as might have been the case 20 years ago.

If we do not modernise, we will not survive. We need a more integrated approach to how we fill bed and breakfast establishments so that they are not the more casual bed and breakfast establishments of the past but will do more business, fill more beds and make more money.

Senator Hannigan referred to post offices, which cannot survive if people do not use them. Young people send e-mails and have credit cards and bank cards. When they want a payment into their account, it is done by electronic transfer. If one is always protecting the past, one will fail on two levels. One will not succeed in keeping open establishments that are uneconomical, as were many of our post offices which were making an average income of €5,000-6,000 per year. On the other hand, if the only policy is to keep open something that is not working and that the new generation has moved beyond, then one is doomed to failure.

My experience in rural Ireland is to be ahead of the game and as innovative as those in urban Ireland, who always accept change. We went from clothes manufacturing and other industries from the time I was growing up to the Irish Financial Services Centre, and we will move on from there in the future. If that is the way cities operate, to keep moving forward, the only way to develop rural Ireland is to seek the new service that young people require because there is a future in that. We must be careful of the nostalgic view of solving problems. It is important that old people have engagement. That is why we invest so much in care of the elderly, day care centres, activities and rural and night buses. We must keep ahead of the situation and be creative in doing so.

I cannot resist the temptation to refer to this and I hope the Senator will forgive me. There is no deprivation in rural Ireland on a community level like that in urban areas. Statistics from sociologists bear me out. As part of the RAPID programme, a remapping process was carried out on this basis and the results are solidly the same. One day I was in Ballycroy, a village with a population of 600 people, 300 of whom were in the hall. I was a little cheeky because I said that while there were challenges with unemployment and migration, I offered to pay, at my expense, for anyone who approached me after the meeting to stay in a deprived urban area of my choice for a week. Not one person challenged me and not one person approached me after the meeting. I said this not to belittle the challenges faced by the community, which were enormous and especially in respect of youth migration, but to give them the self worth they shared with me in the possibilities of the community if they overcame the challenges they faced. Intrinsically, it was a good place to live.

To provide the other side of the story, I remember being in Wexford at a partnership meeting. I made the same comment and a lady put up her hand and asked to speak. She said that I was dead right, that she was from the Aran Islands and that there was no deprivation on the Aran Islands like there was in Wexford town. I was glad and relieved that she validated my point. If rural Ireland was a totally deprived, poor and a terrible place to live, why would we be trying to develop it? The reality is that within rural Ireland there is a potential to have a fantastic society. In terms of the standard of living for a wide spectrum of the community, there is the potential to have probably the best society there because of the closeness, togetherness and structures of society there and all the supports it gives.

This leads me to Senator Glynn's contribution which dealt with a key issue. This programme is about economic development but it also about social development. Why do we as a Government believe that rural development is so important? We believe in that because within rural Ireland we have always had strong community structures. They were informal but strong and driven by people locally as opposed to big organisations or the State. The school and church were mentioned. There is also Comhaltas, which in more recent years has been incredibly strong in promoting traditional music, the cuartaíocht and the GAA clubs. All those tend to bring the whole community together in a way that is difficult to achieve in an urban community. Those structures create a place where people are happy living.

When we talk about developing communities and our society, it is not only about economic development but about getting the right balance of economic, community and social development such that people living in an area are not merely economic units but see themselves as members of a community who care for each other.

Having grown up in Dublin, one aspect of rural Ireland I greatly value is the support of communities for each other in good times and bad. I hope the development companies, in rolling out this programme, take account of such a wider vision and get a balance between economic and social development to ensure we create total communities. Senator Quinn alluded to that vision. It is an important one, namely, about the State facilitating but not taking away that aspect that makes rural Ireland unique. That aspect is that most of what happens comes from the ground up and the State plays the role of a facilitator rather than taking over from the people and deciding for them what should happen.