Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and am delighted she was appointed to this very important position. We go back a long way as we served on the regional authority together many years ago. Even at that time, she was very strong in regard to the development of rural Ireland.

I welcome the publication of the CEDRA report earlier this year. Along with the Minister of State, I attended a number of meetings with the chief proponent of the report, Pat Spillane, to discuss it. What we have now are 34 recommendations which the Minister of State is tasked with implementing. That is an impossible job and I do not think she will implement the 34 recommendations in the timeframe given to her so it is important she fine tunes what it is intended to do over the next 18 months - the lifetime of this Government.

There was a fantastic report in 1999, which was brought to a White Paper by the late Noel Davern, but which ended up on a shelf. The only thing that was implemented from that White Paper was that it opened up education and training for people in the understanding of rural development. I am pleased to say that I qualified for funding and did my diploma in rural development in UCC as a result of that White Paper but very little else came from it. I do not want to see the same thing happen with the CEDRA report.

Will the Minister of State set up a task force on rural development? I greatly respect every civil servant in this country and in this House. Currently, an inter-departmental group is dealing with this but with the greatest respect to the people on it, when this Government is gone and when the Members of this House are gone, we will still have the inter-departmental group. What we need is a task force which will bring in outside bodies to implement what is in the CEDRA report, such as the business people about whom Senator Quinn spoke and the people who represent rural Ireland and who are elected at local level like the Minister of State and myself in a previous life.

We know what needs to be done, which is implementation of the report. Having meetings to identify the issues will not get us beyond where we are at present. The Minister of State is charged, as I heard her state recently at an event in Carrick-on-Suir, with everything outside the farm gate in rural Ireland. This is a massive task, but I believe she is well up to it. I wish to raise a number of issues which the task force could very well address in a positive and tangible way. I do not believe further consultation or discussion is necessary. We need Ministers and Departments to buy into the initiatives which the Minister of State wants to bring forward and provide budgets for her. A working budget of €1 million has been allocated which is fine and will see some pilot projects established, but in real terms, given what needs to be done, €1 million is a very small amount of money.

We should examine places where this has been done well. Senator Quinn mentioned towns in rural Ireland, and I will specifically mention Westport. A representative from Westport was at the seminar in Carrick-on-Suir which the Minister State also attended. Speaking to that person and others who are knowledgeable, the net result of how Westport has developed is not alone that most of the people who live in Westport and the surrounding areas are employed, but 800 people go to work in Westport every day. This is a staggering figure. Almost this many people leave my town of Carrick-on-Suir to go to work every day. What does Westport have which other parts of the country do not? It has an urban planner, specifically employed to ensure every development in the town is for the greater good of the town as an entity and not just for the individual establishing it. We need to consider this concept for the rest of the country. We also need to examine shop closures. We had an urban renewal scheme in the 1990s, which was referred to as section 83. It did some good work, but many of the ideas and concepts coming out of it did not address the bigger picture of keeping town centres vibrant and alive.

A number of years ago, 2006 if I recall correctly, Senator Quinn visited Carrick-on-Suir. He stated a roof should be put on the main street of the town. I remember people at the function were aghast, and he was called many things, such as a mad hatter, for saying it, but it caused massive debate in the town for weeks afterwards on what we could do for ourselves to give us an extra edge. Concepts and ideas such as this make small towns stand out.

I tabled a Private Members' motion 12 months ago on the revitalisation of rural towns. Among the issues we spoke about was pop-up shops. To this day no legislation is in place to govern them. A local authority turns a blind eye for three or four months until somebody in the town objects. We could legislate for this and it would not require too much. We could also examine concentrated urban renewal, and by urban I mean rural towns. We have seen cosy deals done on planning on the fringes of towns where, depending on who owned the land and how well he or she was connected politically, the land was rezoned. We have seen supermarkets being built outside towns. We have taken initiatives on parking. In my town one has 15 minutes free parking on the main street which allows one to go to the bank, newsagents, butchers or another shop to do a small bit of shopping and get back to the car before one is penalised. In Thurles one has free parking on Saturday afternoons. Precedents have been set throughout the country which could be implemented more widely. Speaking about these issues here will not change the fate of rural Ireland. Many of these measures would not cost money but they need to be implemented.

I welcome the fact Eircom will roll out high-quality broadband in 66 regions throughout the country. I also welcome the fact the ESB has received approval from the EU to roll out broadband to 500,000 houses. However, 700,000 houses, many of which are in rural Ireland, will not come under these schemes. We need to examine how to address this because it needs to be addressed.

We must also consider tourism in rural Ireland as there are many opportunities. I met the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, recently about a concept I brought forward which I termed "the GAA way". The concept is to build a product around the history and culture of the GAA, starting in Thurles, where the organisation was founded in Hayes Hotel, and then perhaps moving to peripheries such as Kilkenny. The concept would involve the 32 counties and ensure places which are not known to tourists could become part of a tourist product. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, was very interested in the concept, but as he explained it, at present our tourism has two legs of a stool, which are Dublin and the Wild Atlantic Way. I put it to him the third leg should be the GAA way, which would give an opportunity to parts of rural Ireland where the GAA plays an intrinsic role, such as Kilkenny, Tipperary and Roscommon, to build a product from county level to national level. Throughout the world 500 million people claim Irish descent and almost 400 GAA clubs exist outside the country. These include clubs celebrating five, ten, 15 or 20 years of existence. This alone is a product. Will the Minister of State examine this concept? We must build on ideas such as this to develop rural Ireland. I wish the Minister of State well in her task, which will not be easy. From today I ask her to establish a task force. Interdepartmental groups will come and go, but a task force including all elements required to develop rural Ireland will be a success story.