Ireland to play pivotal role in reversing Europe’s rural exodus
EUROPE'S countryside is in crisis with more than three-quarters of the population now living in towns and cities. This flight from the land has been even more dramatic in Ireland with more than a third of citizens now living in Dublin.
The result is creating major environment, housing, transport and crime problems in the urban areas, while the countryside is in danger of becoming a vast wasteland with the death of rural villages.
More than 1,000 people from 25 European countries put their heads together in Salzburg at the weekend to discuss ideas to reverse the trend. Ireland will play a major role in putting together the new policy during its six month presidency that begins in January and at two major conferences in Mayo and Galway in May.
In the past, farming kept most people living in the countryside, but the trend to big farms with few workers has changed this. The consequent closure of schools and post offices in rural areas has not helped either.
The big problem facing Ireland and the EU generally is how to create jobs and provide a decent quality of life to encourage people to remain in the country and to keep the remaining farmers on the land.
Many of the schemes devised to stop and reverse the trend have not succeeded very well, despite up to
12 billion a year being spent on rural development throughout the 15 EU member states.
Some fear civil servants want to turn the countryside into some kind of theme park with the few remaining residents acting as tour guides.
The man in charge of coming up with a new policy is Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler. He asked the delegates at the three-day brain storming session in his native Salzburg to put forward ideas.
Ireland had per capita the largest number at the conference reflecting the range of interests in rural development including natural heritage, farmers, rural link groups and development organisations. They were led by Minister Eamon Ó Cuiv, Europe's only senior minister with specific responsibility for Rural Development.
Mr Fischler said that Ireland would play a major role in shaping the new policies. The commission's proposals will be ready in late spring in time to be debated at the two EU conferences in Galway and Mayo on rural development and peripheral areas.
Mr Fischler promised the new schemes will be simplified with just one programme, financing and control system tailored to the needs of rural development. There are about two dozen schemes at present with different objectives involving lots of red tape.
The conference also demanded that future schemes be more flexible and allow local regions to apply the schemes in the way best suited to them.
The case for a bottom up approach was illustrated by Professor Joe Mannion from UCD who chaired a workshop on Leader, the EU programme designed to encourage entrepreneurship at local level.
As well as setting priorities for the European Commission in drawing up new programmes for the next budget period, Mr Fischler hopes it will focus attention on the needs of rural areas and persuade the EU leaders to spend money on it.
Up to now the emphasis has been on agriculture, but the reform of the Common Agriculture Policy is changing that.
Nobody quite knows what effect the changes to the CAP will have farmers who received money in the past for producing goods for which there was not a ready market will be encouraged to produce the kind of high-quality food consumers want.
But they will also receive money even if they even if they do not farm on the basis that they are acting as caretakers of the countryside, keeping it unpolluted and in good order.
Mr Fischler justifies this on the grounds that the countryside is a national resource for which everyone must pay. Farming must remain central to rural development, but keeping rural communities alive is more than just keeping a few farmers on the land.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
