Protecting Rural Ireland: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-15 ============================================================ Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel I welcome the Minister. It is great to have him here. I know he too is passionate about rural Ireland, and it shows in the work he does. This motion is important to each of us because it touches on every walk of life, including healthcare and justice. It is about rural communities and farming. It is environmental. Being from a rural community in County Limerick, I thought it fitting to lay out what we see as lacking within our communities, or what has been brought to our attention if we have not seen it ourselves. I start by saying that I will be rejecting and voting against the amendment that was put forward. The simple reason is that it suggests that the Government is brilliant in everything it does. It claims that the Government has done everything possible for rural Ireland, and it does not call on the Government to do anything, which I find kind of shocking. It means that no more needs to be done for rural Ireland. Motions always call on the Government to at least put something into it. I find it shocking. I stand here most weeks and bring up issues about rural Ireland, as do my colleagues on this side and Senators on the opposite side of this House. They bring up rural issues because a lot of them are from rural areas. It was only two weeks ago that Senator Boyle brought up issues with wastewater treatment in his rural area. Senator Kennelly brought up the loss of jobs going back to early last year between west Limerick and north Kerry and how it is affecting his rural community. I cannot understand why the entire motion would be wiped and amended to suggest that nothing needs to be done by the Government. I will go through one or two things we would like to be implemented. We have been calling for a long time for the wind energy guidelines to be updated. I do not know about everybody in this House, but in County Limerick six wind farm developments have been proposed. Two have been going through planning with An Coimisiún Pleanála. There are huge issues with the fear of noise, the flicker, the health implications and what it is doing to rural villages across Limerick. A couple of houses will have 12 turbines within sight. They will be looking out each window to see turbines not that far away. I do not see why it is a big deal to ask for the guidelines that were due in 2009 to be released so that we can see if the new ones being proposed are up to standard and are the correct standard. We are looking for that to be released. We want more gardaí for our rural communities. We often speak in here about how there might be two local gardaí in a Garda station and if an accident happens on the main road, the gardaí have to attend the accident and if something else happens, there is no garda there. The station is shut down. We have seen it across Ireland in our rural areas where a lot of Garda stations were closed or put on reduced hours. I have spoken to a lot of farming families who have the fear of theft on their farms and there are no gardaí around to come over when they ring. People illegally hunt or shoot on their land and they fear they will be overwhelmed. They cannot approach them because they fear that person will turn on them for objecting to them being on their land. There are so many different aspects to this motion. On healthcare, we are always saying we need more home support. I do not see why that could not stay in it. On childcare, we are looking for extra availability and sustainable fees for our rural communities to ensure that parents can go back to work if and when they want to go back to work. The declining population in certain areas means we have the possibility of losing teachers and SNAs from schools in our rural communities. I went to the IFA conference briefing today and asked what issues were high on their agenda for rural Ireland. There were two specific asks. One-off housing is so important for people to be able to build on their own land, especially if farming their land, and to be able to live there and not have to commute to and from work when it is their farm. The second one is about protecting agricultural land. I have said a few times that we need energy security, but we also need food security. The two should not be attacking each other. They need to work in tandem. Good agricultural land is being taken up for solar panels. Farmers are asking if they can put solar panels on their sheds. They are applying to a scheme and one in ten is getting approved, yet they all have to pay the fee to apply for it and they say they are not getting refunded the fee. We should not take up the agricultural land when we can put the panels off the ground. Wind farms are again taking over good agricultural land. We have lots of land in this country that cannot be used for agriculture. Put them there or put them offshore like we have been saying we want for years. On the whole issue of one-off housing, if those young people cannot build on their own land or near where they grew up, they will move away. Eventually, the village will end up losing its pub because there is not anybody to go and have a pint. It will lose its shop because there is not somebody picking up groceries or getting diesel and petrol there. We will eventually erode our communities. I think our motion was quite balanced. We had a couple of asks, including increased gardaí and ensuring that our schools stay running. I do not understand why everything had to be taken out and the Government Senators do not call on the Government to do anything. It fathoms me. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:16+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-15