Members of Macra na Feirme, an organisation of which I was proud to be a member many years ago, are leaving this evening to march to Dáil Éireann and will be here tomorrow. I earnestly request that the Taoiseach be there to meet them at the gates. It would be a good and proper gesture for the Taoiseach and Government to make.

I want to speak about young farmers and the difficulties, trials and tribulations they face. Only 6% of farmers are under the age of 35. This is a telling story about how young farmers feel in Ireland today. I want to see an Ireland where young farmers feel confident about their future instead of worried. At present, they are worried and I will tell the Taoiseach why. They are looking at the Green Party tail wagging the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dog and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dancing to a tune that is being merrily played by the Green Party. They are looking at decisions the Government has taken. I am very worried about the future, for example, when I hear about things like rewetting land, and I would really appreciate it if the Taoiseach could take this in.

Regarding rewetting land, we have to look at what happened to make it dry in the first place and what brought it back from being heavy and wet brown ground, things the Taoiseach might not know much about although, as Taoiseach, he should. He is very educated in other ways but I want to tell him a bit about land. It takes a lot of work, effort, determination and money to dry ground that is wet and heavy. People who did this slaved to make their ground dry. We are talking about places you could not walk on. I was and still am to this day a contractor. I drove machines and drained ground. All I can tell the Taoiseach is that there is work in it but there is also satisfaction in it. I worked in places like the Black Valley where we changed brown ground into green fields. It was a lot more sensible to turn a place near you green than to try to buy land somewhere else. It is outrageous to suggest rewetting land like that.

These are the type of things people are worried about. Twenty years ago, we had good schemes that were sensible in bringing young farmers in and helping the older generation to retire. The schemes that are there today are heavy with red tape and bureaucracy and the actual financial benefit to the farmers is minuscule. I want to highlight one point. I am so proud of our beef, dairy, sheep, pig and poultry sectors. We do it better than anywhere else but what are we facing now? We are facing reductions one way or another. The Government denies it wants to reduce the national herd but it will do it by stealth. It seems to be okay for us to watch the Brazilians chop down rainforests and make their ground green and maybe then they will be able to increase their herd and export their produce to us.

Is that what the Taoiseach wants for our young farmers?

I think Macra na Feirme is a very impressive organisation. I have met Macra on many occasions. I have had them into Government Buildings and I have met them at the Ploughing Championships. It represents roughly 10,000 people in rural Ireland, some of whom are farmers and some who are not. I would be very happy to meet them again. I understand they expect to be at the Dáil around 1 p.m. tomorrow. As the Deputy knows, I will be here in the Chamber from 12 noon until 3 p.m. so I may not be able to meet them tomorrow but I certainly would like to and will make arrangements to do so in the very near future.

This is a Government that is committed to rural Ireland and to making rural Ireland a better place to live. I am encouraged by the census to see that the population of every county in Ireland is now increasing again. That is something I believe should be celebrated. We are investing in the national broadband plan, which was opposed by a lot of people in this House. It is a €3 billion investment in rural Ireland, the biggest in the history of the State. Under the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, and her predecessor, Deputy Ring before her, we are investing €1 billion in towns and villages and rural communities all over the country. In addition to that the whole technological universities programme has also been of great benefit to regional Ireland.

I looked at the issues that Macra wants to raise with us. They are all valid issues and ones on which we would be happy to engage with them. The first issue is accessing affordable housing. I hope the decision we made today, which I hope the Deputy will support, to increase the grants to bring vacant homes back into use and to get rid of development levies for people building their own home, will be welcomed by Macra today. I am pretty sure it will be. It will help people building their own home in rural Ireland or seeking to bring a derelict property in rural Ireland back into use. The second issue is disjointed and sparse healthcare services for rural communities. Healthcare is complicated. I come from the time when the local GP could do everything for you: suture your wounds or deliver your baby. That world has changed. Health services are more specialised and they function differently. We are investing in doctor-on-call services and in primary care centres all over the country. We have increased the rural practice grant. Macra raises issues such as the lack of public transport in rural Ireland. We acknowledge that is an issue and we are expanding it. The Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has increased the routes in rural Ireland by 25%. There are 60 new routes in the recent period alone. It also raises rewetting parts of rural Ireland. There has been a lot of scaremongering about that. We know from our projections that between now and 2030 we can do all the rewetting on publicly owned land, mainly the Bord na Móna lands, and we are looking at what we need to do beyond that. There has been a fair bit of scaremongering around that. I hope we will be able to dispel that as the directive is refined and negotiated at European level over the next couple of months. Macra also raises the need for a farming succession scheme to help young farmers, which the Deputy also mentioned. That is a valid thing. We would be keen to talk about that. Becoming a farmer is not the same as setting up a business. You cannot just set up a farm; you need access to land. That is why it makes sense to engage with them about a succession scheme.

I certainly hope that the Taoiseach would not accuse me of scaremongering on any issue because what I talk is facts; hard, cold facts. The Taoiseach spoke about housing. I want to highlight one of the main things that young farmers want when it comes to housing. All they want is to be given a piece of paper called a planning permission. It is something that can be extremely difficult to get in rural Ireland at present and indeed in the past and perhaps also the future. I would like to see measures being taken to ensure that young people who want to live in the countryside and rear their families in the countryside will be given the opportunity to do so.

On rewetting, I want to highlight what I said already about Brazil. It is going ahead and increasing its output and capacity at a time when the Government is looking to reduce our capacity. It is not long ago that a Minister here spoke about liquid gold, that is, milk. Talk about a see-saw. One minute the Government is encouraging people to produce; then it says: No, pull back. Give the young people the encouragement they need for the future. The Taoiseach mentioned the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys. Maybe if some more members of the Cabinet pulled a leaf out of her book we might have a better Government. The Taoiseach should think about that.

I thank the Deputy for the compliments he has bestowed on the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, who is certainly one of the stellar members of my Cabinet.

In relation to rural housing, I do not have the exact figures, but I remember discussing this issue with the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, not too long ago. I think approximately 1,000 one-off rural homes get planning permission every year. This figure has not gone particularly up or down, but it has been a pretty steady figure across the years. Yet, we need some rules around planning. There are real costs to dispersed development and real problems arise from that, so we need to make sure we balance that so that people who have a genuine local need get planning. However, it cannot - and I know the Deputy would not want this - just be the case that everyone gets planning permission. There has to be some sort of rules and regulations around that.

In relation to Ministers taking a leaf from the Minister, Deputy Humphreys's book-----

A shamrock. A three-leaved shamrock.

-----in fairness, we have the Minister, Deputy Foley, who has taken enormous action on school transport, which is of particular benefit to people in rural Ireland. I mentioned the actions that have already been taken by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, to improve public transport in rural Ireland-----

And more than his book.

-----and I know the work that is being done by other Ministers in that regard.