Rural Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-14
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Dara Calleary (FF), Mayo

All I can say is that if Brenda was in charge of the Mayo team, we would have won many all-Irelands. I absolutely mean that. I wish the team every success. It will be a great week and it would be an amazing achievement.
The Deputy is absolutely right. The Minister of State and I have met the GAA demographics committee and we have discussed this with Deputy McGuinness too. I will incorporate much of its work into the new Our Rural Future programme. The GAA has led in what it has done with the demographics committee. I congratulate Benny Hurl, the chairman of the committee, and our former colleague, Shane Cassells, who has joined that committee, for doing a lot of work on this. I will incorporate some of the ideas. Many of the ideas are captured in the national planning statement such as getting people back, investing in sporting facilities and remote working to give people a chance to return to their home areas. People are going to travel but I want them to come back. I want to give them communities to come back to. Communities have a standard that they are used to travelling to, and if we do not provide that standard of facilities and infrastructure, we will not get them back. I absolutely want to get them back. I want us to win multiple all-Irelands.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14