McCarthy denies report is attack on rural areas

THE chairman of Bord Snip has rejected claims its €5.3 billion cost-saving package was an attack on rural Ireland.

Economist Colm McCarthy said Irish Farmers Association president Padraig Walshe was wrong to suggest the report was prepared with “no appreciation of the importance of the rural economy beyond the Pale”.

Mr McCarthy said the board was not about pitting cities against farming communities but making the whole economy stable.

He said: “[Mr Walshe] knows perfectly well that there are plenty of people in Dublin 4 who know lots about agriculture”.

This weekend 7,000 farmers demonstrated at the offices of Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith in Cavan where Mr Walshe criticised the “Dublin 4” mentality of the report.

Bord Snip Nua proposes closing 1,000 small primary schools, half of Garda stations and local agriculture offices. It also calls for some farmers’ schemes, including REPS and the disadvantaged areas payment, to be cut.

Mr McCarthy said he recognised farmers had a difficult two years because of the weather and it had been “dreadful” to analyse such severe measures in those circumstances.

However, he said the proliferation of small low- tech social services in the countryside was costly and of benefit to nobody.

“It is about delivering cost-effective, better services outside the M50,” Mr McCarthy told RTÉ radio.

Mr McCarthy gave no credence to reports some cabinet ministers were pulling against the report.

The proposed cuts were also included in Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s speech at the opening of the MacGill summer school in the Glenties, Donegal, last night. He said:: “Sustainability will be determined not just by simply cutting back on spending and getting the sums right, but by optimising all spending in such a way that the overall objectives of an economy at the service of society can best be realised. Cutbacks should never lose sight of the long-term objective.”