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A LONG-AWAITED GOVERNMENT plan for island communities has been sent back to the drawing board after the minister in charge told officials to revisit the document and “firm up” its proposals.
Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Rural and Community Development, said the report won’t be published until she is “satisfied that it contains credible actions that will make a difference to our island communities” living off the coast of Ireland.
“While it’s clear that a lot a work has been done in getting the draft policy to this stage, I believe there’s more work needed to firm up the text and, more importantly, the actions,” she said.
The island-specific policy document is the first of its kind since an interdepartmental committee published a framework for developing Ireland’s islands in 1996 - by increasing access to the islands with more ferry routes and improved pier infrastructure.
As reported last month by our sister site Noteworthy, the overdue document is to provide solutions for long-term problems facing islands, whose inhabitants feel they have been increasingly left to compete with mainland towns and villages for funding and services.
The islands policy, which is a commitment in the Programme for Government, saw the Cabinet agree in July 2019 that a new Inter-Departmental Committee for islands be established – formed from 12 Departments – to develop a national policy for the inhabited offshore islands.
But consultation for the report, which was initially due to be given to Cabinet and published in 2020, was hampered by the pandemic and restrictions to travel to the islands.
The deadline then changed to 2022 after consultation resumed in January 2021 but the report is now not expected to be returned to Humphreys until later this year.
A former minister with responsibility for the islands in the 2000s, Galway East TD Éamon Ó Cuív, told The Journal that the delays surrounding the report have meant “paralysis” and “stagnation” for the communities awaiting the plan’s outcomes.
In a response to a parliamentary question from Ó Cuív, Humphreys said she received a draft of the policy before Christmas but that “more work” was needed so she has asked her officials to “revisit” the plan.
“Our island communities been waiting a long time for this policy and I’m not going to settle for more of the same from State bodies if that doesn’t deliver anything better for the islands. I want to see them committing to meaningful actions in this plan,” the Cavan-Monaghan TD said.
“On that basis, I’ve gone back to my officials and asked them to re-engage with colleagues across Government Departments and agencies to revisit the document and make sure that this Islands Policy is accompanied by a robust Action Plan.”
Humphreys added that she is determined the policy will be finalised as soon as possible, and then brought to Government for approval so it can be published.
“But I won’t do that until I’m satisfied that it contains credible actions that will make a difference to our island communities,” the Fine Gael deputy told Ó Cuív.
The Fianna Fáil TD had queried the publication of the report with the minister and the reasons behind its delay.
Speaking to The Journal, Ó Cuív said it was crucial that more consultation takes place with islanders for the plan.
“I believe that the drawing up of the pan has led to four years of stagnation in relation to implementation of new policies for the islands,” he said.”The lack of dynamic interaction with the islanders themselves means that a lot of consultation is rigid and formulaic and… not getting to grips with day-to-day and medium-term issues on the island.”
He said the minister should meet islander groups twice a year and that the senior department officials should meet them quarterly.
“I am deeply worried that rather than a radical new plan for the islands, that the plan will contain a copy and paste of existing policies of agencies and departments as they pertain to islands collected in the one place,” he said.
A senior figure on one island welcomed the news that the report is being revised with the promise that it will deliver stronger results for the thousands living off-shore.
However, a number of island representatives told The Journal that consultation with islanders was needed to ease long-held feelings that they are an afterthought in the State’s plans.
Marjorie Carroll, from Tory Island, while welcoming the revision, warned that it would be “foolish” if the new report does not contain new consultation with island representatives.
The importance of the document was also emphasised by Máire Uí Mhaoláin who leads Comhar na nOileán – a non-profit group advocating for island communities.
“For 38 years, the Irish Islands have been fighting to be recognised as a specific sub-regional area in all aspects from economic development, social, community and environmental development and treated as a specific sub-regional areas when it comes to all government sponsored programmes,” said Uí Mhaoláin, who lives on Inis Oírr, one of the Aran Islands off Co Galway.
She said due to the size of the islands, challenges facing people can often be “hard to identify and hidden”, but they range from depopulation to unemployment and their vulnerability to extreme weather events given the impact on transport.
Ó Cuív warned that in a “rapidly changing world” the islands are particularly affected due to climate change and cost-of-living impacts.
He claimed that it is not appreciated that prior to the 1990s, there was little in the way of regular and standardised maritime transport to ferry islanders to the mainland and vice versa.
Marjorie O’Carroll, from Comharchumann Thoraí Teo (Tory Island Co-op), said islands such as hers badly need investment in water services, but that major funding is also needed for health services.
“We’ve been living under a boil water notice for years,” she said.
While Tory Island received funding and was able to build a primary care centre, O’Carroll said it isn’t staffed fully – meaning that islanders often need to leave Tory for various treatments.
“We have an island nurse who is resident but we have very little services here. Really we have just the basics at the moment; we need more services and need to allow people to be able to see the visiting doctor more, especially in winter.”
Islanders are also often at the “mercy of market rules” where a cost-benefit analysis has to be done before a project can receive the greenlight, Uí Mhaoláin claimed.
“The islands are constantly in competition with mainland areas for resources or programmes. Development constraints on the islands cannot be solved by market rules,” she said.
“We welcome a policy for the islands and look forward to it as we hope it will address many of these inequalities.”
Ensuring that “sustainable permanent populations” will need to be key, Uí Mhaoláin said.
“The residents of the Irish Islands would like more than anything else to be consulted on the policy document before it is finalised and published,” she added.
“We would recommend this practice and hope that the department will use this approach and as already stated look forward to a specific policy for the Irish Islands.”
The department has maintained that it has carried out consultation with island groups including running public information meetings to discuss the overarching plan.
It said the revised report is due to be published in the second quarter of the year – potentially May or June.
If you want to find more about Ireland’s offshore islands, read Noteworthy’s recent ISLAND NATION investigation which revealed that islanders have been waiting 25 years for policies to thrive and not just survive.
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90,000 on the social housing waiting list, of which 50,000 non-nationals.
That’s more than 55% of waiting list (non-nationals account for 13% of population).
Why?
Coz they move here for our generous Social Welfare system
how about what % have criminal records, what % have more than 5 kids, what % have never worked a day in their lives, what % have been nasty neighbours in their previous social housing.
Yes good news for non-EUers and other queue jumpers etc anxiously glued to their TV’s listening to news of the soft touch Ireland’s budget of what they can expect when they scam into Ireland. Free council house, more pay for each churn-out-child.
IRISH QUEING FOR 7YRS LOSE OUT TO IMMIGRANTS
From Nov 09 to March 2010, out of 19 council houses, allocated by Tralee council 11 went to immigrants. Many Irish people are on the housing waiting list, some waiting for 7yrs, and the houses are going to foreigners.
Kerryman 14/4/10
OVER HALF ON HOUSING LIST ARE FOREIGN
MORE than half of the applicants for council homes in north Dublin are from abroad, new figures show.
It is the first time that there have been more foreign than Irish people on Fingal’s social housing list.
“For the first time, more than half those on the waiting list for social housing in Fingal County Council are non-Irish nationals. A third are from outside the EU,” Fine Gael’s Kieran Dennison said.
http://www.herald.ie/news/over-half-on-housing-list-are-foreign-27973856.html
Because they are the new working class.
hmm queried, was it answered yet? thats shocking in all fairness.
Great, 2.2bn to be spent on “social” housing for anti-social people…
Ah, the great Divide and Conquer debate with prejudice and disdain for the less well off. We’ve been expecting you, Come on in.
Any couple on a combined income of less than 60k a year in Dublin city are looking at Social housing.
Any individual on less than 50k a year is not going to afford a house out of a high social housing density area.
The hubris of the past still lives but no one wants to face up to the numbers. Being poor is as cheap as ever but being middle class like we thought it was in the 90s and 00′s is not anymore and given the overwhelming % of people who live in households with less than 70k per annum, does the middle class exist anymore liked we imagined it.
tis true to an extent, over-weaning SW makes people irresponsible, have a look at the SW brats homes, places are in sh*t. Left to working class employed to clean their areas up while being abused for doing so. Some SW ok, the amount we have simply makes people spoilt and less responsible, a culture of expecting everything and for everything to be done for them.
My post above is very much Carrie from Sex and the City monologue. It was on in the background and I got it like 2nd hand smoke.
More houses for local authority to have to maintain. higher Lpt for private houses
Sean Dunne is on the way back home
Can’t wait to hear what the Socialists and the Anti Austerity Alliance et al have to say about this.
What do you expect them to say?
Helping people get a home when they can’t provide one for themselves is a bad thing ?
Well for one AAA are going to have to undergo a name change because austerity is now dead with this budget. My larger point is that I can’t wait for leftist groups to try and pick this budget apart they’ll find something to complain about even now their austerity boogeyman is no more.
Austerity is not dead, you really need to think before you type.
YAY! Austerity is over. Let’s all party. The Good times are back., Woohoo.
Darryl, €5 here and 0.5% there does not even come close to starting to erase the enormous drop in income and living standards people have endured as a result of years of successive cuts.
The pints of Irish Water and extortionate mortgages are on me.
Looking at that budget and the growth forecasts austerity seems as dead as the dodo to me. This government have done a tremendous job turning it around.
Darryl they followed the path laid out by FF, and I’d wait for the final details before clapping them on the back.The sting is normally delivered by a junior minister when no one is listening.
What a wonderful rose tinted world you must live in, Darryl.
Bob I’m dealing with facts growth forecasts are up across the board, unemployment is down across the board, income tax returns higher than they’ve been in years, more new cars being sold year on year an finally with this budget the initial easing of austerity measures. These are facts Bob.
Cant help but wonder will they make a b***s of this & we will end up once again with more ghost estates.
We running at a shortage of about 20k houses a year, the building boom was 7 years ago. Long time with hardly any building.
If we get up to 40k houses a year then we might be having a few too many built.
Ghost estates are mostly gone in Leinster and Munster at this stage.
Come to Clare seanie, plenty still left here! (Not all classified as ghost but still huge under occupancy with many homeless people being shipped to Limerick for emergency accommodation)
have your say