Protecting Rural Ireland: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-15
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Paraic Brady (FG), Agricultural Panel

I welcome the Minister. I, too, support the countermotion. My colleagues have raised a number of issues but I would like to touch on the GAA's demographics report. It is about how we support those clubs in the countryside that are finding it hard to get players and the population to stay in that area. In my home village, it is all about supporting two local schools. In the case of the one in Ballinamuck, if we can support keeping even three families around and there are two children in each family, we keep a national school open and we keep a teacher there. With that, we keep a bus on the road and we also keep a GAA field alive.
It is very important that we understand what rural Ireland actually means. It means, with the likes of the farm assist, that when a farmer gets the farm assist he is staying at home. He is farming. He is working the land, but he also maybe has another job block-laying or whatever he is at locally. However, his family is reared there. He is buying his groceries in the local shop. He is spending all the money locally. He is probably doing a small bit of farming, drainage and whatever else. Everything is local. Everything is supporting local jobs and local communities. That, in itself, is very important.
When you go out to the west of Ireland and look out across the sea, the nearest school could be 23 miles away. Glangevlin and Dowra are what we classify as rural where people have to travel for 23 or 24 miles to get to local schools. It is all about supporting those schools, supporting communities and keeping communities alive. I welcome it and thank the Minister for his attendance today.

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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