Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for his deliberation. Unfortunately, successive Fine Gael-led Governments have allowed a two-tier recovery to develop. Growth is concentrated in a few hands in small parts of the country.Government decisions are, ultimately, damaging the attractiveness of living and working in rural areas. Seven years of Fine Gael Government has allowed a two-tier recovery to take hold, which has concentrated growth disproportionately. This has been confirmed by a recent EU Commission report that regional imbalances remain across the State in investment, economic growth, competitiveness and innovation.

The new Department of Rural and Community Development is a slimmed down Department with a total budget for 2018 of €212 million following the breaking up of the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs by the Taoiseach last June. This compares to a budget of €370 million for the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, under the Fianna Fáil Government in 2010. Once more, token priority is being shown to rural Ireland with key functions falling between two Departments with responsibility for the islands and the Gaeltacht staying in the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. What is worse is that the Department has a capital allocation of €88 million for 2018 but at the end of April this year only €6 million, or less than 7% of the funding, has been spent. Last year the Department failed to spend its allocation of funding and had to return €19 million in capital and current funding to the Exchequer.

We are calling on the Minister to outline in detail, today or in the near future, what plans he has to ensure that all of the €88 million capital that has been allocated to his Department for this year will be spent. Rural Ireland urgently needs this funding and the Minister has a responsibility to ensure that this money is spent.

Rural communities are struggling with stripped down services, bank, post office and Garda station closures and the ever present threat of rural crime. Fine Gael’s six year record has been one of decimating rural Ireland’s existence, leaving utter devastation in terms of service provision and supports. Meanwhile, farm incomes have been hit by severe price volatility across all sectors, jeopardising the family farm as the basis of Irish agriculture.

The decision of the Fine Gael led Government to close 139 rural Garda stations has undoubtedly had an adverse impact on crime rates in these communities and some of these stations have to be reopened. This measure has allowed criminals to target the countryside. The Government has constantly denied there is a problem with rural crime and it has said that the statistics are down, but this is not the experience of families living in rural Ireland.

The Government’s Action Plan for Rural Development is another false dawn for rural Ireland and rehashes existing announcements, programmes and employment forecasts. There is very little substance in this document that will immediately improve service provision, infrastructure and employment opportunities in rural parishes. The plan will, ultimately, be judged on what additional new funding will be ring-fenced. It is the fourth rural development plan produced by Fine Gael in 33 months, following the CEDRA report, the rural charter and the programme for Government. Clearly, there has been a systemic rural policy failure by Fine Gael. There is no long-term vision and planning as the depopulation of rural parishes escalates. Shockingly, more than 500,000 rural households and businesses must wait until 2023 for State intervention to receive moderate speed broadband. This is ten years after the national broadband plan was first launched. The ultimate litmus test will be how much additional funding will be ring-fenced for the current plan before it comes to fruition.

Disgracefully, the chickens are coming home to roost for Fine Gael’s maladministration of the vital Leader rural enterprise funding stream. Not only has the budget been cut by €150 million, or 40%, it has proven to be a bureaucratic mess for Leader companies. It is a damning indictment that out of the total €250 million funding allocation, only €1.5 million has been spent on actual Leader project payments outside of administration costs up to 15 April 2018. This is despite being in year five of this rural development programme 2014-2020.

The six-monthly progress reports on the rural action plan are another PR smokescreen to give the impression that all is fine in rural Ireland. Rural parishes will not be led up the garden path in yet another box-ticking exercise by this optics led Government.

Fianna Fáil is committed to building an Ireland for all where the fruits of recovery are felt throughout the State with more regional balance. In the confidence and supply arrangement to facilitate a minority government, Fianna Fáil extracted policy commitments on rural Ireland to be implemented over the Government’s term in office, examples of which are an increase Garda numbers to 15,000 and the development of new community development schemes for rural areas. These commitments resulted in a reversal of the cuts made to the farm assist scheme and increased CLÁR and local improvement scheme funding. Fianna Fáil secured a commitment in budget 2018 for the recruitment of an additional 800 gardaí. This will bring the force’s strength to about 14,000.

I do not want to be damning in everything I say but as someone who lives in the heartland of rural Ireland the only progress that I can see is in press releases. I live in the midst of it. It is an area of the country that is dying on its feet and we cannot keep portraying the image that the area is alive and well. Football clubs, parishes, small communities, rural schools and even the farming community, which was the heart and soul of rural Ireland for many generations, are all dying on their feet. They need immediate and actual intervention, not just talk.