asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if he will consider extending the Dunmore-Clonberne pilot area so as to embrace the Williamstown, Ballymoe and Glinsk area, County Galway.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - County Galway Pilot Area.
9.
The original pilot area in County Galway was extended to about three times its original size last year and further extensions are not contemplated by me at this stage.
Is the Minister aware that the Ballymoe and Williams town districts are, in actual fact, more depressed than the areas in which the pilot scheme is already in operation? In view of that fact, it is only right that the Minister should extend this pilot scheme to the areas mentioned in the question.
I think it may be wrong to assume that merely because one area may be more depressed than another this is in itself complete justification for extending or providing a pilot area, because the whole basis of the pilot area institution in the first instance in the western counties is that it is a programme the purpose of which is to assess the problem of agricultural development in the West, and this is on a broad basis. We would hope it would have a reflection on a broad basis and therefore it need not necessarily be that a pilot area so chosen must be in the most depressed part, nor indeed does it follow that it should be in the best part. Rather, I think, the pilot area to be truly pilot and to give returns on which general schemes for the whole area could be drawn would ideally be a cross-section of the type of area that one is likely to expect in the whole region of the West.
Would the Minister say what are the limiting factors in extending the programme to a greater area of the country?
Money.
Money.
The idea which would seem to underlie the Deputy's question is that we should extend this without question to all parts. Again I would like to point out that the very name of this scheme "The Pilot Area Programme" indicates that it is of a pilot nature and therefore is trying certain things out on a pilot basis to find where the different approaches are suitable, where changes in our approach to various things may have to take place, to find out what is good and proper in the process and to find out what is not so good. It is really an education for all concerned. This is what underlies it, an effort to find out what will work and what will best work and what is not working so well, and this pilot element is still going on. We still want to learn more than we know at the moment and only when we are satisfied that we have learned what there is to be usefully learned in this way should we then consider general application.
Could the Minister say when he will cease to call it a pilot scheme?
The Deputy is enlarging the question which deals with areas in County Galway.
I do not want to let the Minister out if I can at all. Is there a pattern emerging? Surely a pattern must be emerging?
The short answer which will not help the Deputy is when we get to the end of the pilot, when we have ceased to learn from it.
It will become the parish plan. It is the parish plan at this stage.
We will all be learning a long time.
Is the Minister aware that the Dunmore-Clonberne pilot area has been in existence for some years and surely due to the fact that there is a full time agricultural instructor in a small area such as Clonberne, the Department of Agriculture should, at this stage, have learned something from that area?
They never learn.
That would take too long: we have learned so much.
What trend?
What has emerged in the initial small areas is now being applied to three times that area and we want to find out whether what proved useful in the small area will prove equally good in the enlarged area.
The parish plan will operate.
He had to change the name.