Rural Ireland abandoned - Daly

 Rural Ireland has been abandoned by the Government, Kerry Fianna Fáil Senator Mark Daly told the Upper House.

 Some 20 general practitioner, GP, posts have remained vacant for more than three years, he said. According to the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, 20% of GP posts will be vacant within five years. “The Government has no plan to fill those posts,” he said. “The epitome of the Government's abandonment of rural Ireland can be found in its initial response to Mr. Pat Spillane's report on the matter. I refer to the fact that it allocated the same amount of money to fulfilling the report's objectives as it gave to the care of horses in urban Ireland. Imagine that.”

According to the UN Human Development Index, Senator Daly said Ireland is currently ranked the seventh best place in the world in which to live, which ranking is equal to that of Germany and above that of Canada and the United States. “This is a matter of which everybody should be proud,” he said. “It is the achievement of generations since the establishment of the first Dáil 98 years ago. We celebrate the first meeting of Dáil Éireann on 21 January 1919. Dáil Éireann was established on the principles of the 1916 Proclamation. In essence, we are all guardians of the values of the 1916 Proclamation. Its aims and objectives are timeless and universal. It should be remembered that what we will be celebrating this year is that which others sought to achieve in 1916. It is not about those against whom we struggled to achieve our full potential as a nation. Pádraig Pearse and his fellow signatories to the Proclamation sought to set out ideals and principles to guide us when faced with problems that they could not even imagine. “