The consultation on the next phase of Our Rural Future is welcome but the real test is whether this becomes another high-level document full of warm aspiration or actually improves quality of life, economic development, town and village regeneration, inclusivity and protection of our natural and built heritage in rural communities. Rural Ireland needs services, infrastructure, housing, transport and the renovation and repurposing of long vacant and derelict buildings - in short, serious investment in the everyday foundations of a decent quality of life. If we want to see our rural communities thrive into the future, we have to move beyond the outdated idea that rural policy is essentially one version of agricultural policy with a few community grants attached. Farming has been central to rural life for generations. It has sustained families, supported local businesses, creameries, marts, butchers, food processors and small businesses, and given many communities their economic and social backbone. One of the strongest pro-farmer arguments we can make is that rural development must diversify and farming must be supported to diversify. Many farmers are under enormous pressure from volatile markets, rising costs, escalating debt, land pressures, weather instability and environmental obligations. We should not pretend ever-greater intensification of agriculture is a sustainable answer for every family farm or rural community. Farmers who remove hedgerows and native trees wholesale from their land often make these decisions within a policy and market framework that has rewarded intensification and treated nature as a nuisance or obstruction, rather than as part of the rich fabric of rural Ireland. Hedgerows, mature trees and wetlands are vital for biodiversity, flood protection, carbon storage, water quality, landscape character and our natural heritage but we also have to understand their destruction in the context of an agricultural policy many farmers are simply locked into. A serious rural policy must support farmers to make a decent living while protecting those habitats and irreplaceable parts of our natural heritage. There is a false and divisive narrative in some of our public debate on rural Ireland. Some people, including in this House, seek to appropriate rural Ireland as an identity, restrict who is allowed to belong within that identity and portray anyone who cares about, for instance, climate or nature as somehow hostile to rural life. That is nonsense. Rural Ireland is not a monolith; it is made up of farmers, farm workers, carers, teacher, nurses, small businesses, businessowners, artists, tradespeople, young families, older people, disabled people, Travellers, migrants, Irish speakers, people who go to mass, people who do not, people who play GAA and people who never did. It includes people whose families have lived in the same parish for generations and people who have made their homes there more recently. No one owns rural Ireland. No one has the right to use it as a cudgel against people who do not fit a narrow version of what rural identity is supposed to look or sound like. I grew up down a bóithrín between two small villages. I spent a fair part of my summers stacking bales of hay and drawing them in on tractors. I also listened to The Smiths and read Sylvia Plath in my more anguished adolescent moments of alienation. I did not play GAA. I found parts of the culture I grew up in quite stifling and insular. Like many people around me, I had mixed feelings of love and hate, and many shades in between about rural Ireland and those feelings have shifted considerably over time. I am just as much a part of rural Ireland, shaped by it and proud to be part of it, as anyone else in this Chamber who invokes the term as a badge or authenticity or moral superiority. Rural Ireland formed me, just as it formed others here, in its strengths, beauty, constraints, complexities and contradictions and that is the point. Rural Ireland is richer, more diverse and more complex than the caricature often presented in political debate. Caring about hedgerows, rivers, trees, wildlife and soil is not anti-rural Ireland. Wanting rural communities to be more inclusive is not anti-rural Ireland. Gay, lesbian and trans people, migrants, artists, Travellers, and people who simply do not conform to a narrow template of rural identity should feel at home in their own rural communities. A serious rural policy has to start from that plurality. Rural Ireland cannot be reduced to a slogan, a voting block or a lurch into pre-globalisation, anti-science nostalgia. It is a living, changing, diverse set of communities and policy should be designed for the full breadth of those communities, not just for the loudest or most familiar version of them. Caring deeply about nature is not anti-rural Ireland; it is the opposite. Rural Ireland cannot be defended by degrading the very landscape that sustains it. Our policy must reflect that diversity. Policy must be also rooted in everyday experience: whether people can get to work, college or hospital; access childcare or a GP; rent or buy a home; get broadband or remain in their community as they age. Transport is one of the clearest examples. In some parts of the country, Local Link has been transformative. It has given older people more independence. It has helped people without cars get to appointments, shops, college, services and to visit friends and family. It has helped local businesses by making towns and villages easier to reach. This is what public transport should do but in other parts of the country, including for much of east Cork, the service simply does not exist in any meaningful way and this is profoundly unfair. We cannot talk about rural opportunity while accepting a situation where one village has a regular bus service and another has a pale shadow of a service; where one older person can get to town independently and another is effectively housebound; or where one young person can access education or work and another is dependent on lifts. This is not a small inconvenience; it is a major quality of life disadvantage. The absence of public transport affects employment, education, health, social participation, family finances, disability access and climate action. If Our Rural Future is serious, it should set out a pathway to universal baseline rural mobility, with regular, accessible and affordable services connecting villages with towns, towns with rail and rural communities with healthcare, education and employment. Housing is another central issue. Rural communities cannot thrive if the next generation cannot afford to live in them, if workers cannot move into them, if older people have no suitable options to downsize locally or if families are forced out because there are no affordable homes. At the same time, many rural towns and villages are scarred by vacancy and dereliction, with empty upper floors, former houses allowed to decay, commercial buildings lying idle while local groups have no meeting space, and small businesses cannot find suitable premises. Take Ladysbridge in my constituency, where a school with remarkable potential for community use in an expanding village with very few amenities has been left to rot for decades. Dereliction is not just an aesthetic issue; it is State neglect writ large. It speaks of a lack of interest and a lack of concern. Tackling dereliction should be a key part of Our Rural Future, through stronger local authority resourcing, serious use of compulsory purchase orders where necessary and meaningful support to over- the-shop units back into use. This is particularly important in Gaeltacht communities. The Irish language cannot be sustained by rhetoric alone. It needs living communities behind it, affordable homes for young families, schools, childcare, transport, healthcare, digital infrastructure, local employment and cultural spaces. We cannot celebrate the Gaeltacht as part of our national identity while allowing housing pressures, lack or services and a lack of opportunities to hollow out the communities that keep the language alive. A social infrastructure strategy to sustain Gaeltacht communities has to be core to a language strategy. Teanga bheo atá i gceist agus ní mhairfidh sí gan phobal beo. Enterprise policy also needs to fit rural life and enhance it. Rural economies depend not only on export-led companies but on cafés, trades, childcare providers, tourism businesses, small retailers, mechanics, digital workers, food producers, artists, carers and community enterprises. We need to listen to small rural businesses and hear about what is holding them back, such as insurance, energy costs, broadband, housing for staff, transport, water infrastructure, planning delays, access to finance and the decline of footfall in town centres. We need investment in regional employment hubs, technological universities, health and social care, broadband, public transport, water services, childcare, schools and community facilities. The consultation process for Our Rural Future must be more than a listening exercise. It must lead to a different model of delivery and clear outcomes. It must lead to the decisive improvement in the lies of rural people. Can they get a bus? Can they get a home? Can they access a GP? Can their child get childcare? Can a disabled person live independently in his or her own community? Can a small business survive on the main street? Can young people see a future locally? The next Our Rural Future policy should recognise the diversity of rural Ireland. It should move power and resources closer to communities. It should expand Local Link and other forms of rural transport. It should address vacancy and dereliction in a comprehensive way with leadership from local authorities, not through a patchwork of grants that community groups have to scrap over, over a period of years. It should support farmers by diversifying rural economies. It should invest in public services as the foundation of balanced regional development and protect Gaeltacht areas as living communities, not just symbols of our national heritage.

Sentiment score: 0.07