As I said last evening, the encouragement that emanates from the success of the new ventures through the Gaeltacht Services plan should find extension in more enterprise and in a more thorough and exhaustive market research. I had said to the Minister that we in West Cork in the Gaeltacht areas were a significantly neglected stepchild of this section of departmental activity. I find no excuse for such obvious neglect, because as I said, if only for one factor alone, and that the significant part played by that area in the achievement of our liberty, we should get special consideration. Allied to that is the fact that abundant in these Gaeltacht areas in South-West Cork is that ready intelligence that typifies the area. The Minister should have no difficulty in extending into that area some of the schemes sponsored by this branch.
Further than that, there still exists in these areas the hereditary residuum of various crafts, particularly lacemaking, and I want to end on this note: While the Minister may say to me: "But we gave you a new industry in Ballingeary," I would reply: "Is fada a bhíomar ag feitheamh leis." We have been waiting a long time for something, and I want an assurance from the Minister that that is only an earnest of the expansion contemplated, because if we are serious about the preservation of the people with the full spoken knowledge of our language in the area and environment of their birth, we must get something into these areas that will at least give them an economic living or the prospects ultimately of an economic living in those areas.
We cannot pay more than lip service to the revival of the Irish language and to the preservation of Irish culture and tradition by any other means than by effective effort to do something within the areas concerned. As I said earlier the most significant part of the tragedy of the recent census of population is that the major depopulation is taking place in those very areas which are the spearhead and the vital factor in the preservation of our language and our Gaelic customs.
I appear critical; I do not think the criticism is really directed specifically against any Minister. I criticise what I term bluntly the lack of imagination and enterprise and effort in getting industry into the Gaeltacht areas. I do it not in a spirit of criticism of the Minister, but in the hope that we may ulimately get somebody to face up to the magnitude of the problem and stop this miserable scratching on the surface of a vital national problem, one that goes to the very roots of our cultural foundation.
If that is done, the Minister with the earnest of success that I have described regarding certain marine products development, has scope to speculate in expansion, and mark you, any significant effort by Gaeltacht Services to do something to give much-needed encouragement to people within those areas will be welcomed, because these people at present, despite all the talk and despite all the various suggestions that have been made, feel that the Gaeltacht areas are doomed and that we here in the National Parliament will wake up to do something for these areas when the very cause for which we strive will have been defeated by the continued exodus and decay of the population in these areas. If 'twere done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 'twere done quickly.