Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I refer to the issue raised by a couple of speakers earlier, namely, the closure of 103 branches by Bank of Ireland. Regrettably, there are three branches in my county in Rathdrum, Tinahely and Carnew. My first thoughts go the employees and their families. It does not matter how much one knows of what is coming down the road, it is still a shock when it is announced. In looking at this as an attack on rural Ireland and the impact of that, we must look at the consistent erosion of services in rural Ireland. Today, it is the closure of branches by Bank of Ireland. In the past 18 months there have been 159 post office closures. We have seen the withdrawal of Ulster Bank from rural Ireland. That is a complete erosion of the sustainable life within rural Ireland.

The nail in the coffin of rural Ireland is the national planning framework document. We are talking about financial services here today but under the latter, 38 small and large villages in Wicklow can only grow by 0.5 of a house every year.Our rural towns can only grow by 3.3 houses a year. How are we even going to sustain our schools, football clubs and communities? While, today, the focus is on financial institutions and the role they play in rural Ireland, the bigger debate that needs to happen is on the role of the national planning framework. What this House needs with the three relevant Ministers - the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, in regard to financial services to rural Ireland, the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Heather Humphreys, and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien - is an open and frank debate on how we are going to sustain rural Ireland into the future. If that is the only level of population growth we can have in our rural towns and villages, it will not even sustain our schools, never mind any other activities. It needs to be looked at and it needs to be reversed.