Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I extend céad míle fáilte to the Minister. He has been in the Oireachtas since 2007 and since I came into the Oireachtas in 2016 until now, the Minister always gave time to people in our party to discuss the issues we wanted to discuss with him. In this budget, we see many of those policies, though not all of them as it is not possible to put everything in at the same time. We see them clearly in the budget despite the difficulties we are in.

I wish rebut the arguments that have gone on over the past 24 hours or so that this budget is anti-rural. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have strong opinions about this because such false and misleading statements being made to media should be rebutted. I will provide some instances to illustrate the budget is not anti-rural. A sum of €10 million is being provided for IDA Ireland to develop advanced factories and industrial estates for companies seeking to invest in Ireland, especially outside Dublin. A sum of €30 million has been ring-fenced for a call for regional enterprise centres for initiatives to create jobs in every region in the country, while €3 million has been allocated for networks in digital hubs. There will be €100 million to help businesses adapt to Brexit. As Brexit is catastrophic for rural Ireland, this is very important.

There are many other measures and I do not have time to go through them all because time is limited. A sum of €11 million has been made available for local enterprise offices and many measures the farming community requested, such as the food ombudsman; a new rural environment protection scheme, REPS, and the rollover of the targeted agricultural modernisation schemes, TAMS; have been included in this budget.

The Chair wants me to finish and I will have a better chance to expand on this again but I want to send a clear message that this is the proper budget. I compliment the Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath, Donohoe and Eamon Ryan, on coming together in a calm way and putting in place what is necessary for the crisis we are in. Let us row in behind it. There were not and could not be missed opportunities here. We are in uncertain and different times and, hopefully, this budget will work out and this time next year, we will have a far better outlook on the economy.