Pearse Doherty: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Have Failed Rural Ireland
Pearse Doherty accuses Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael of abandoning rural Ireland, blaming decades of policy decisions for service closures and decline. He confronts recent comments by the former Fine Gael Taoiseach and calls for policies that let rural communities live and work at home.
Pearse Doherty tells the Dáil that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed rural Ireland, arguing the decline is visible in closures of banks, post offices and Garda stations and in the fallout from the fuel crisis. He says people in counties like Donegal feel the effects every day and that public anger has been growing.
Doherty highlights concrete harms: schools, services and job opportunities disappearing, families forced apart, and young people seeing no future in their home communities. He singles out the fuel crisis and recent remarks by Leo Varadkar as moments that exposed the government's record and deepened resentment in rural areas.
While critical, Doherty insists change is possible: a rural Ireland where people can build homes, sustain farms and contractors, and where Gaeltacht and island communities thrive. He frames the debate as a choice of policy and priorities, arguing that governments can reverse the decline and breathe life back into rural communities.
Main accusation
Pearse Doherty tells the Dáil that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed rural Ireland, arguing the decline is visible in closures of banks, post offices and Garda stations and in the fallout from the fuel crisis. He says people in counties like Donegal feel the effects every day and that public anger has been growing.
Local impact and evidence
Doherty highlights concrete harms: schools, services and job opportunities disappearing, families forced apart, and young people seeing no future in their home communities. He singles out the fuel crisis and recent remarks by Leo Varadkar as moments that exposed the government's record and deepened resentment in rural areas.
Vision for change
While critical, Doherty insists change is possible: a rural Ireland where people can build homes, sustain farms and contractors, and where Gaeltacht and island communities thrive. He frames the debate as a choice of policy and priorities, arguing that governments can reverse the decline and breathe life back into rural communities.
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Transcript
Deputy Doherty. Go raibh maith agat. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed rural Ireland. With independence, they pay lip service to these communities, but turn their back on them time and time again is the reality. There's a real anger out there, Minister, and it's been simmering below the surface, an anger that boiled up when you abandoned people in the face of the fuel crisis. When people screamed out for help, you turned a deaf ear. But this didn't start this month or indeed even this year. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been chipping away at rural life for decades. Rural Ireland is being closed down, one basic service at a time, banks, post offices, Garda station, you name it, the basics any community needs to survive. Pick a way to measure it, wages, infrastructure opportunities, whatever way you cut it, people in counties like my own in Donegal are being left behind. And Minister, people don't need to look at statistics, they feel it every day. They feel it when they're talking to their child on Zoom from Australia. They feel it when they walk down the village that gets quieter and quieter every year. And the mask clearly slipped last week when the former Fine Gael Taoiseach looked down his nose at rural Ireland, when he accused the hard-working people of rural Ireland of sponging off the state, the people that get up in the dark and head out in all weather to make sure there's food put on his table. Well Leo Varadkar's comments need to be a turning point. When any doubt is cast aside, the decline of rural Ireland is government policy. But let me say this, policies can change, governments can change, and the tide can turn. An Ireland of thriving rural communities is possible, a communities where we need to be able to live, to work, people able to build their own homes in their own communities. One where we value our family farms and our contractors. One where our young people don't feel that there is no future there, but actually are enabled to live their life in the community where they were born, like the generations before them were able to do. One where our Gaeltacht and our island community is thriving. This is not about narrowing people's horizon, it is about broadening them, it is about breathing life into the heart and soul of Ireland. The communities that make up our country and rural communities, just like any other, deserve to survive and deserve to thrive. For more UN videos visit www.un.org