First, it was a mistake not to make the bi-weekly payment optional. In most post offices it would not create an issue if people needed to get the payment bi-weekly. It can happen and there can be all sorts of reasons. It is much safer. I am not very happy personally about giving the lump sum of the fuel allowance rather than paying it bi-weekly. There are temptations in giving lump sums to a small minority but we know people are vulnerable; if they get the money in a lump they will spend it. I am not sure it was necessary because let us be straight about it, more people are migrating to direct payments instead of bank accounts all the time. The numbers going to the post office are reducing anyway. Many people would have opted for the bi-weekly payment. I am not sure, however, that was the best idea and it needs to be thought out carefully again. The other thing we know is any change upsets people, particularly those who are more vulnerable. Those people get upset by change and we must be sensitive to that.
Those of us who live in rural Ireland also realise again and again that the big demand is not post offices, it is broadband. Let us call it the way it is. It is 10:1 that broadband is the issue one receives the calls about. I believe I received two calls about the post office. I got endless demands for broadband. Mobile and broadband are the two big issues. There seems to be reluctance in some quarters here to recognise we are modern in the rural areas and that we use broadband. People of 70 and 80 years, and every age, use Facebook and all the rest and watch it every day. There is this kind of myth that it is only young people. Facebook is, in fact, an older person's platform. Broadband remains an issue. I am aware of the work the Chairman has done on it and I compliment it but we need to hurry that up. From the beginning I have said whatever resource it takes just get on with the broadband plan and see if we can cut that from seven years to five or less years. I must also say I am worried and we have debated before that the most isolated areas, the areas in the hills where there are often no mobile signals, will be last on the list. We must take that issue up as a committee.
I hear what is being said about the entertainment and events industries and that is a huge issue. There was, however, an equally huge issue in the beginning that was not dealt with. When the original pandemic payments came out they were based on what a person earned in January and February of this year. The problem was that many of the rural and coastal economies, particularly in the tourist spots, operate from March or Easter until the end of September or October and, thankfully, in more recent years up to Hallowe'en and in some cases until Christmas. The months one will find the people involved in the tourist industry on their holidays are January, February and March. It was a pity the Department did not recognise this issue and say that a person could prove he or she works seasonally and earns all of his or her living in nine months of the year because there are no tours in January, February and March up until St. Patrick's Day. I believe that was a major hit for these areas. There were certain sectors of society. The arts is one big one and events is another. Then we have all the other issues of people in transport. Again, anybody involved in tourism transport will have had the slackest period in January and February and, again, they were caught. Even to this day it is fair to say that people who have got "mobile" fixed assets are not being treated as well as those with "fixed" fixed assets and this has a big impact on the rural areas. People who have buses or limousines or whatever servicing the rural areas and the tourism offering there had the double whammy of the seasonal issue in the beginning and now the fact that, in many cases, they do not have fixed premises and are working from home. They are, however, valuable assets.
An issue I came across which I do not know if anyone else did is with regard to PRSI records. Even with the new schemes, a person must have last year's self-assessment tax not only submitted but the credits credited to him or her. In the beginning of October there was no obligation to have them in. Some people had to scramble to get the tax return in so they could prove they were self-employed last year. That can be a little bit of an issue.
I am glad people have mentioned the islands. In the beginning, the islanders were the first to want to close down the islands ahead of the general population.
At all times, islanders could come and go and all services could come and go. That was vital. We could not make prisoners of the islanders on the islands. The islands did not pursue a zero movement strategy. It was not possible. Workers were coming in to provide all of the services necessary on the island and people on the islands had to go to the mainland. There was movement but certainly the islands remained fairly Covid free.
The issue of health on the islands has been mentioned. One of the big risks, unfortunately, and perhaps it is an issue we should look at in a wider context, is that a lot of the staff of Áras Ronáin on Inis Mór come from the mainland. There was a false case, which turned out to be negative, on the island related to this, as far as I understand. Thankfully, it was not a Covid case. It involved somebody who had come to the island. This is always a risk when going into a vulnerable situation such as a nursing home. To my knowledge, there was no case in the nursing home. It seems a strange change in society, when 40 or 50 years ago we could provide medics and nurses who lived in rural areas. This is one of the big changes, as now we seem to be importing people all the time to provide basic services. We should look at whether there is a way to encourage people to return to the islands, or live permanently on them, and provide these services. It would create extra jobs.
When we introduced the ferry services I started them from the island to the mainland in the morning. This meant the boat was on the island overnight and the staff were employed from the island. There was no point in bringing staff over in the morning on an empty boat. One of the reasons was that it was convenient for the islanders because I wanted to give them the first run on the boat. Another reason very much on my mind was that it would create good permanent steady employment on the island by being island based and, therefore, create a bigger population with more families, which is absolutely vital. We do not want the islands as museum pieces. We want real working communities there.
Inis Mór has a very hard-working GP who has done tremendous work. Inis Oírr has a GP who also works on Inis Meáin. In the old days there was one GP between the three islands. Inis Mór has a doctor but all of the other islands are dependent on resident nurses. It is very important to keep these health services on the islands and, in particular, keep the resident nurses on the island. The islands are relatively well served for emergencies, although I heard that some suspected cases were taken off the islands on the regular boats. I have tabled a parliamentary question, to which I am awaiting a reply, on why suspected Covid cases were taken on the regular ferry services. I got the usual response that the matter had been referred to the HSE. I have asked what steps were taken to isolate those people on the boats. The boats are fairly big and it is probably possible to do this but it is important to find out what precautions were taken. I have heard concerns about it.
We need to look at the islands in their own right, inasmuch as there is some manufacturing on the islands. Allowing manufacturing to continue seems to be a reasonable proposition given the islands were Covid free. It is not like allowing it to continue where people are coming from throughout the country. These are islanders working in a factory and producing goods. The whole trick was to keep it off the islands as much as physically possible. We need to have fine-tuned policies.
I compliment the Department with responsibility for the islands because it undertook to keep all of the ferry services going, effectively with empty boats, in other words, discouraging passengers from the get-go. It was the same with the air service. These were lifeline services. Very few people were travelling compared to normal and it is important that we note all of the lifeline services were kept going.
The issue of water is very interesting. It is the most basic service. Most of the islands have good water services on them. Inishbofin has its own lake. Gabhla off Donegal is interesting because many years ago when we put in the electricity Donegal County Council suggested to me that it would run in the water pipe from the mainland at the same time. It put in the water pipe and the electricity. This is important because the islands with the perennial problems of water are Inis Meáin, Inis Mór and Inis Oírr. No matter what has been done on the islands there is a problem getting enough water because they are limestone, particularly because of the large tourist industries there. This year, they had to bring in water. They have been at this for a long time. They bring in water by boat every year. It is enormously expensive. This needs a permanent solution.
I have put forward a solution but the State needs to get involved, including the Department with responsibility for the islands, in the same way as the State was involved in providing the money for electricity on the islands. It is brought in on a cable, apart from Tory Island. There used to be generators. My suggestion is quite simple. There is an electric cable to Inis Meáin, Inis Mór and Inis Oírr and all of the other islands. I have suggested examining the feasibility of putting in a second electric cable. If renewables are to be produced on the islands, we will need a lot more resilience in our electric cables to take out the electricity from the islands. They are ideally placed in the teeth of the wind. This would do three things at the same time and the Government would fund it through the Department coffers. An extra electric cable would be run to export electricity and provide resilience in case one cable breaks. If the cable breaks at present, that is it, and that has happened. At the same time, a fibre-optic cable and a water pipe would be run to the three islands. Unless the Government makes it a clear policy to do a feasibility study on this, and provide Exchequer funding to do it as a stand-alone project, it will not happen. However, it is the answer to the problem. The amount of water the islands need in the greater scheme is small but compared with the water resource on the islands, it is huge. This would solve the problem once and for all.
No matter how expensive capital projects look in the short term, they last 50 or 100 years and they are very cheap in the long term. We are telling people to wash their hands every minute but there is no water on an island, even in a quiet tourism season. Something we should take out of this is that the State, in the form of the Department with responsibility for the islands, should look at commissioning a study to bring in all of these cables in one go as a package to be funded directly through the Department with responsibility for the islands, and then contract out the work to the ESB, telecoms companies and Irish Water to get the job done in unity. A working group should also be established. It was done in Donegal many years ago and it is a working model.
With regard to what Deputy Ó Cathasaigh said, how that language was treated was an utter disgrace, nothing more and nothing less. It was the usual thing. The leaflet was sent around and it cost a huge amount of money to send a second leaflet. The law states quite clearly it should all be done bilingually. Signage could have been put up throughout the country. Children are going to Gaelscoileanna throughout the country and we are spending a lot of money on the Irish language on the one hand but we are making a joke of it on the other hand. How can we tell a child this is a real language when they only see it in school? The minute the children walk out the door of the Gaelscoileanna the world they see outside is totally different. I noticed the signs around the Houses are bilingual. Once one sign is being translated, they should all be translated. The old ríomhaire nowadays will keep producing them for us no bother.
