Rural issues need action not words
Fianna Fáil's failure to adequately address the crisis facing rural communities over the last six years has now resulted in parishes all over the country being faced with the harsh reality of depopulation. This terminal decline of rural areas is happening at a time when the country's population is growing at a steady rate and approaching four million.
Young people are being forced off the land to build a home for themselves in cities and towns whose infrastructure and services are at breaking point.
The Taoiseach is attempting to create the impression that planning regulations regarding one-off housing in rural areas are about to change.
He failed to say how this was going to be achieved nothing new there what legislation would be introduced and how the Government would deal with the powerful unelected Dublin-based pressure groups, who have made the death of rural areas a reality. This announcement came from Bertie's get-together in Sligo and is the result of pressure being brought by anxious rural backbenchers. This is another Fianna Fáil kite and needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
Unless we see real legislative proposals brought forward to revolutionise the planning system in rural Ireland, it doesn't matter what Bertie Ahern says about rural communities, as his only interaction with country people is at the ploughing championships.
Bertie Ahern has, uncharacteristically, done one good thing, however. He has put his Government's incompetence in relation to things rural back on top of the political agenda.
Rural people have a chance to breathe life back into their own communities and the first real step in the rehabilitation of rural Ireland will be next May's local elections.
Patrick O'Donovan,
Churchtown Road,
Newcastle West,
Co Limerick.
