Rural Planning: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel

I grew up in Limerick city and then moved out to the county when I was 17. I thought my life was over. How could I live somewhere where there was not a shop two minutes' walk away from me? I ended up loving it so much, however, that I actually moved further into the county. I am in a place now where the bin service will not drive down to us because we are so rural. We have to bring the bins three miles up the road for the bin service to collect them. That is the choice I made because I absolutely love living in the county. I love being surrounded by wilderness and having a little bit of solitude every now and again, where I know that if somebody is going to be calling to me, I am going to get a phone call first. I do not get the knocks on the door. I have never had a politician call to my house, which is one of the upsides. I do not have to go through the rigmarole of telling them who I am.
Where I am living, however, it is becoming necessary to merge two GAA clubs just to have enough kids to make a team. It is actually quite sad when they cannot play in their own parish and have to join another parish. There was a time when there was a rule that you had to get permission to go to another parish. Now, they are all being amalgamated. Our schools are losing teachers because we cannot keep enough children in our country schools. The schools are losing a teacher and that teacher is losing their job. Schools are also losing out on SNA supports because there are not enough kids from the previous year to make up the required number.
We also have the case where a lot of our young people are not seeing that they could possibly build a house on their own land because the bureaucracy is very difficult to navigate. I had to drill my own well because we do not get water services down that far. A lot of people are not willing to do that, so they are moving abroad. This is stopping the next generation from having kids who will join the sports clubs, and so on and so forth. I do not necessarily think there needs to be a reset, but we do need to start taking away some of that red tape when it comes to rural housing.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10