Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think Macra na Feirme is a very impressive organisation. I have met Macra on many occasions. I have had them into Government Buildings and I have met them at the Ploughing Championships. It represents roughly 10,000 people in rural Ireland, some of whom are farmers and some who are not. I would be very happy to meet them again. I understand they expect to be at the Dáil around 1 p.m. tomorrow. As the Deputy knows, I will be here in the Chamber from 12 noon until 3 p.m. so I may not be able to meet them tomorrow but I certainly would like to and will make arrangements to do so in the very near future.

This is a Government that is committed to rural Ireland and to making rural Ireland a better place to live. I am encouraged by the census to see that the population of every county in Ireland is now increasing again. That is something I believe should be celebrated. We are investing in the national broadband plan, which was opposed by a lot of people in this House. It is a €3 billion investment in rural Ireland, the biggest in the history of the State. Under the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, and her predecessor, Deputy Ring before her, we are investing €1 billion in towns and villages and rural communities all over the country. In addition to that the whole technological universities programme has also been of great benefit to regional Ireland.

I looked at the issues that Macra wants to raise with us. They are all valid issues and ones on which we would be happy to engage with them. The first issue is accessing affordable housing. I hope the decision we made today, which I hope the Deputy will support, to increase the grants to bring vacant homes back into use and to get rid of development levies for people building their own home, will be welcomed by Macra today. I am pretty sure it will be. It will help people building their own home in rural Ireland or seeking to bring a derelict property in rural Ireland back into use. The second issue is disjointed and sparse healthcare services for rural communities. Healthcare is complicated. I come from the time when the local GP could do everything for you: suture your wounds or deliver your baby. That world has changed. Health services are more specialised and they function differently. We are investing in doctor-on-call services and in primary care centres all over the country. We have increased the rural practice grant. Macra raises issues such as the lack of public transport in rural Ireland. We acknowledge that is an issue and we are expanding it. The Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has increased the routes in rural Ireland by 25%. There are 60 new routes in the recent period alone. It also raises rewetting parts of rural Ireland. There has been a lot of scaremongering about that. We know from our projections that between now and 2030 we can do all the rewetting on publicly owned land, mainly the Bord na Móna lands, and we are looking at what we need to do beyond that. There has been a fair bit of scaremongering around that. I hope we will be able to dispel that as the directive is refined and negotiated at European level over the next couple of months. Macra also raises the need for a farming succession scheme to help young farmers, which the Deputy also mentioned. That is a valid thing. We would be keen to talk about that. Becoming a farmer is not the same as setting up a business. You cannot just set up a farm; you need access to land. That is why it makes sense to engage with them about a succession scheme.

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