John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Phelan, who is a colleague of mine. I concur with my colleague, Senator Landy, that the Minister of State had a lot to do and very little time in which to do it. I agree with colleagues who suggest that €1 million funding for her project is not sufficient and she should look for more.

Towns in Roscommon were very badly hit as a result of the recession. I refer to towns such as Castlerea, Boyle, Strokestown and in particular, my own town of Ballaghadereen. We had a beautiful hotel which closed down, including its leisure facilities. A meat factory was closed down and many pubs and shops closed. Too many houses were built during the so-called good times with the result that we have too many ghost housing estates. In one housing estate 20 vacant houses were demolished last week as a result of funding provided at the time by Deputy Jan O'Sullivan who was the Minister of State.

There needs to be a new way of thinking with regard to rates which is a very significant issue. In my opinion rates should be calculated on the basis of turnover and profit and not on the square footage of a building. Some months ago I met with a delegation of publicans from Galway and Roscommon. They told me that this is being piloted at a snail's pace. Some of the rural pubs are paying a lot less and some of the urban pubs are paying a lot more. As the Minister of State will appreciate, the punters are out on the street in Shop Street in Galway, for example, in front of the pubs. These pubs could be the same size of square footage as a pub in Senator Ó Clochartaigh's area which would only have two punters in the bar at night and that pub pays the same level of rates as the pubs in Shop Street. This issue needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency because rates are the difference between a business staying open or closing and this is happening every day of the week.

The local authorities give no leeway with regard to payment of rates. They are not interested in the alternative. I refer to the instance of the hotel in my town. Fifty jobs could be created if it were to re-open but there is no joined-up thinking between Departments. There should be a mechanism to allow the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation to talk to the local authorities and suggest that the hotel could be given a rates holiday for a year or a year and a half, until its business is established. At the end of the day that hotel will take 50 people off the dole.

There is much talk about the closure of small post offices. A total of 193 post offices were closed down in Fianna Fáil's time. Eleven have closed down under this Government but these were not forced closures; they were closed down because nobody was willing to take up the mantle and run the post office. I ask the Minister of State to bring my recommendation on post offices to the Minister, Deputy Burton. The Department of Social Protection is encouraging as many people as possible to provide details of their bank accounts for the household benefits package but there is no option for people to use the post offices. We need to give more business to the post offices in order to keep rural Ireland alive.

The positive aspects with regard to my town are that we have solid employers and the BMW assembly which has been given funding of €100 million by the EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan. We have the Western Development Commission and we are probably one of the nearest towns to Knock airport which is a selling point. We are developing a tourism package which is branded as Lakes and Legends. I have sought a meeting with the Minister of State next week so that I can bring to her attention that the Western Development Commission is prepared to come on side with us in an effort to revitalise towns. I suggest that we could use Ballaghadereen as a pilot project.

Development levies are far too high in counties like Roscommon. The new building regulations introduced by the then Minister, Phil Hogan, mean that building a one-off house could cost 25% more than in the past. These regulations are not progressive and I ask that the Minister of State should speak to the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, in this regard.

In the areas of social inclusion and mental health I suggest that dedicated funding should be provided to the Men's Sheds projects and the rural men's projects. I brought the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, to view one of these rural men's projects in Taughmaconnell recently and she was very impressed with the work they do.

We need to review our wind energy policy and move away from wind farms which are not productive. We will end up with ghost wind farms in the same way as we ended up with ghost housing estates.