Phil Hogans Sop to Rural Ireland

Sponge Bob

Phil Hogan and Simon Coveney have created a talking shop under the chairmanship of Pat Spillane in order to travel around the country engaining with rural 'stakeholders' . These obscure talking shops are well hidden and the Galway West stakeholder meeting will be conducted on a boat...or perhaps even a ship....moored off Clarinbridge in 3 weeks

https://maps.google.ie/maps/ms?msid=201076745889727192680.0004d3cc03ae09b37cf0f&msa=0

While a Claremorris meeting will be held in what may be a cowshed ( zoom in) next week

https://maps.google.ie/maps/ms?msid=201076745889727192680.0004d3cc03ae09b37cf0f&msa=0

I am disappointed at Pat Spillane for lending his name to what is shaping up as a farce and would have expected better of Coveney who is allegedly co initiator of this exercise. Anyway Spillane and the lads have a website ( from where I got the Boat and Cowshed links) and this is what they claim they do when they get to the cowshed or boat.

http://www.ruralireland.ie/index.php/reports-evidence

and

http://www.ruralireland.ie/index.php/research-evidence

I fully expect Hogan to have Máire Geoghan Quinns sinecure in Brussels by the time this farce is over. By the end of it he will have destroyed the very areas that he, Coveney and Spillane maintain they are now listening to. If you have any queries as to what this farrago is meant to be then by all means direct the queries here....you may do so from whatever mine in West Australia you normally work in ...by all means.

http://www.ruralireland.ie/index.php/contact

Objectives of the Commission for economic development in rural areas ( CEDRA)



Having regard to the commitments on economic development contained in the Programme for Government, in particular,
• To encourage job creation and sustainable enterprise development
• To be recognised as a modern, fair, socially inclusive and equal society supported by a productive and prosperous economy
• To facilitate where possible export led growth,

and

given both the differential degree of economic development and the variable impacts of the economic downturn between urban and rural areas,
the Commission will to develop a draft strategy guiding medium-term economic development of the Rural Areas for the period to 2025.

The strategy will
• outline the key actions needed to ensure that rural areas, to the maximum extent will, contribute to and benefit from economic recovery
• identify ways in which rural areas can contribute to and benefit from national economic development strategies
• be cognisant of pressures on the public finances in making recommendations
• inform prioritisation made by Government and other stakeholders in implementing future actions


It is expected that the draft strategy will be presented to the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government in October 2013.

Someone PM me the name of the Boat Please!

antoobrien

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Phil Hogan and Simon Coveney have created a talking shop under the chairmanship of Pat Spillane in order to travel around the country engaining with rural 'stakeholders' . These obscure talking shops are well hidden and the Galway West stakeholder meeting will be conducted on a boat...or perhaps even a ship....moored off Clarinbridge in 3 weeks

https://maps.google.ie/maps/ms?msid=201076745889727192680.0004d3cc03ae09b37cf0f&msa=0

The Galway west meeting is in a boat west of the corrib and galway east is, by the looks of it, in a bush on the west of the river.

Sounds like a bunch of townies organising it all right.

CathalODono

Bob

Thanks for spotting the couple of inaccurate markers on the CEDRA map. The Galway East meeting will be held in the Teagasc office in Athenry and not on a boat. The Galway West meetings are being finalised, but will probably be held in Oughterard and Letterfrack. The "Cattle Shed" in Claremorris is in fact a business park on the outside of town where the Teagasc office is located. CEDRA has been trying to utilise public buldings in rural areas to minimise the cost of the consultation process.

Our hope is that CEDRA is not a talking shop, maybe a listening shop. It consists of a number of people with experience of rural economic development, who almost entirely live in rural towns and who have given their time voluntarily to advise the government on a number of practical ways in which jobs can be generated in rural areas. We have held a number of meetings with "stakeholders" - essentially business people, farmers, communities, etc that have been trying to keep their businessses afloat through the crisis. They have made some very practical suggestions of things that could be done to help them, which we hope will make it into the recommendations in September.

CEDRA was set up because unemployment has increased more in rural areas than in urban areas (although of course there are urban blackspots), with a need to make job creation strategy more rural focused. It is in everyone's interests to find solutions to the unemployment crisis - it is the biggest problem we face, bigger than the banks, the public finances and something that needs to be sorted before the others are resolved. We have had a terrific response from the general public and from rural businesses and communities and we will do our best to present their views to Government.

We can only hope that we can do justice to their contributions and try to enable their views to have some impact.

If you would like to make your own input into this consultation, we would be happy to hear from you at www.ruralireland.ie.

Cathal
CEDRA

Sponge Bob

CathalODono wrote: »

Thanks for spotting the couple of inaccurate markers on the CEDRA map.

Our hope is that CEDRA is not a talking shop, maybe a listening shop.

Thanks Cathal. The Gmaps markers now land in places where once could indeed hold a meeting.

Regrettably the long construction bubble masked a severe decline in real economic activity in rural areas as well as leaving a large pool of the wrong skills in those same areas, not to mention the empty houses built for all those immigrants who came in droves.....to build houses.

I suggest using this pool of resources to fibre up rural Ireland instead of building another half arsed mobile network that crashes every evening when people get home to rural areas.

But you will inevitably find that the department of communications has no interest in anything useful that and will wilfully obstruct it to the bitter end.

Keep your final report short. Good 5 point plans...if implemented, can be better than 120 pages of existential angst.!! But as Clár is gone, REPS is gone etc etc there is very little funding anywhere to improve the socioeconomic fabric of Rural Ireland.

And most of the cabinet represents Dublin City and rural TDs make up the backbenches.

ednwireland

there is no interest in rural ireland by this or any government, i work in a business that sells software to buildiing services companies in the uk (based in the northwest. beleive me despite utterances to the contrary the only thing we see from gov. is more charges and more red tape (especially when you try and access any of the initiatives) we actually recruited 2 people last year (and another possible this year)

so i apologise for my cynicism but i dont beleive this talking shop will be listened to or acheive anything

The Waltzing Consumer

ednwireland wrote: »

there is no interest in rural ireland by this or any government, i work in a business that sells software to buildiing services companies in the uk (based in the northwest. beleive me despite utterances to the contrary the only thing we see from gov. is more charges and more red tape (especially when you try and access any of the initiatives) we actually recruited 2 people last year (and another possible this year)

so i apologise for my cynicism but i dont beleive this talking shop will be listened to or acheive anything

Can you expand a bit more? What kind of initiatives & charges?

ednwireland

The Waltzing Consumer wrote: »

Can you expand a bit more? What kind of initiatives &

afew in here

http://www.djei.ie/publications/2012APJ.pdf

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Sponge Bob wrote: »

And most of the cabinet represents Dublin City and rural TDs make up the backbenches.

But does it not need to be seen in a broader context? Just reading some of the linked material, this initiative seems to be trying to do that.

Either rural Ireland has resources that can be mobilised to achieve more, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it can't make up the deficit by using the political system to suck in a permanent flow of resources from elsewhere. That's, surely, the message that might be learned to date.

I think there has always been a gap between the rhetoric around rural development, and the reality. For instance, in the usual rhetoric, it's common to talk about rural areas having a strong community spirit and a tradition of self-help. On the other hand, in discussion of rural pubs seems to rotate around the inability of that strong community spirit and a tradition of self-help to stretch to organising a rota for designated drivers.

If this dialogue can do something to get some frank and honest discussion around these things, it won't be a harm.