Research carried out recently by the Western Development Commission that five of the six counties with the lowest employment growth rates in the country are in the West of Ireland is no surprise to me and it’s about time the Government take the situation in rural counties and the west of Ireland in particularly seriously.
Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Clare come out bottom of the pile and once again what I have been saying since I was elected about the neglect of rural Ireland is proven correct. The sad facts of the matter are that unless and until we have proper infrastructure in rural Ireland and in the West in particular we will have no major growth in employment.
We need immediate improvements in roads, rail, water and orher insfrastructure not to mention broadband which is still a major problem in rural areas. We now have a situation where a major broadband provider is making installations in two houses on a given road and leaving three houses behind. In many areas we don’t ever have a proper mobile phone signal which is hard to believe in this day and age but it’s a fact.
The problems baing faced in rural Ireland will continue until the Government take the situation seriously and provide the correct environment wherby jobs can be created. For that we need proper infrastructure under a number of headings and we have to ensure that everyone in every area is treated equally.
