Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State again. It seems to be that he is always here answering and responding to me but I am delighted he is here. I understand that the Minister cannot be here and I wish him well.

This Commencement matter relates to nodes and in preparation for this commentary on nodes I decided to look at a number of county development plans this morning. Strange as it might seem and not knowing that the Minister of State was coming in, I pulled Kilkenny County Council so it is appropriate that the Minister of State is here as the Deputy for Kilkenny. I will quote the Kilkenny County Council development plan and I want to praise Kilkenny County Council as it is one of the leading councils on nodes. Section 4.7 of the Kilkenny county development plan on rural nodes policy talks about the potential for smaller towns and villages and the settlement hierarchy of rural nodes. It defines what a rural node is and talks about the key objectives for rural nodes in rural communities, particularly in Kilkenny, the Minister of State's constituency. Objective 4J is as follows: "To develop a programme for ‘new homes in small towns and villages’ in conjunction with, public infrastructure agencies such as Irish Water and local communities for the provision of serviced sites with appropriate infrastructure to attract people to build their own homes and live in small towns and villages". That is what we might like to call small nodes when it comes to the hierarchy and I quite like the word "node". It goes on to state: "It is an objective of the Council to facilitate and assist Irish Water" in this and it talks about examples of this work going on in Mullinavat, Paulstown, Bennettsbridge, Inistioge, Piltown, Fiddown and Kells. What a coincidence that we should be talking about Kilkenny and I acknowledge the enormous work the county council has done there.

This issue originally came about because it was suggested that the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, who cannot be with us today, made an announcement. The headline in The Meath Chroniclewas: "The Minister says funds available for development of rural 'nodes' ". In response to that a number of councillors came out and asked where the money is. This article was published on Saturday, 21 May 2022, and the county manager for Meath said he knew nothing about it or about any money and that there were 50 rural nodes possibilities within the county but that the council had no funding.

I will not go on and talk about the further detail in the article where things were attributed as being said by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, other than to say it raises a critical issue about rural housing and communities and how we can support local authorities to develop rural communities. We need to keep these areas alive. We have schools, infrastructure, churches and sports clubs in rural Ireland and people want to live in rural communities. We must provide homes for people in rural communities, especially where there is an older generation of people who are heavily relying on a son, daughter or member of family who may wish to build a new home close to them.

We have to move on. We have been waiting for a more detailed response to the Flemish decree which deals with rural housing.Successive Governments have suggested they would introduce a rural housing policy in response to the findings of the Flemish decree and we are still awaiting them. The Minister of State might be able to advise the Seanad and myself where we are at regarding a follow-up in terms of rural housing policy, being particularly mindful of the Flemish decree and its recommendations, findings and deliberations. I would like to know where the money is. I accept and welcome the development of rural nodes. I look forward to encouraging and seeing the Government encourage more people to build new homes in rural parts of the country that are sustainable and appropriate to their setting. I would be more interested in hearing where funding is that has been committed to these rural nodes.