Spending money on the village and town renewal scheme that was announced earlier this week is very welcome but we are putting the cart before the horse and our priorities on the way to tackle rural regeneration are not in the right order.
Earlier this week a constituent of mine rang me with a query, and she had to go to the bottom of her garden to get a mobile phone signal to make the call. It is that kind of thing that we have to tackle if we want to be serious about rural renewal. How could any new or existing business operate without a proper mobile phone signal, never mind a broadband service? Announcing 10 million Euro of spending that includes 4 million already announced is fine and makes for great headlines but that will not address the serious infrastructural problems that exist in rural Ireland in so many different areas. If we don’t get serious about rural renewal then we can forget about it altogether.