The plan for a scheme providing late-night transport for rural dwellers will be ready by next month, Minister for Rural and and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív said yesterday.
At the Teagasc national rural development conference in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, the Minister criticised the mindset of those who suggested such a service would be too expensive or that it should not happen.
If rural people suggested that urban people should not have a social transport service, they would be "run out of the country", he said.
"Rural life has to be comparable to urban life. People in rural areas quite rightly look to having the same level of services as those in urban areas," he said.
He said the scheme, which would be "modest" and an extension of existing daytime transport schemes, would be delivered through the local rural transport initiatives or the Leader rural development companies.
"I hope to be able to put a framework together in the near future and I will call the Rural Forum together, which is made up of all the rural organisations, and discuss the draft before implementing it," he said. He hoped the initiative would be in place before June.
"It is a very modest scheme and we are only complementing the day services and like all my models it will be done on the cheap," he said. For every €1 spent on bus transport in this State, €4 was spent subsidising urban services, he said.
"There is a perception that everything in rural Ireland is very,very expensive but that is not true.
"Surprisingly, the cost of providing services in rural Ireland tends to be away more cheaper than providing services in urban areas," he said.
He said no one living outside a town in Ireland ever got a contribution from the State for providing a sewerage system but everyone in the towns expected State money to be spent on their sewerage systems.
He said this had been proven by the fact that for the expenditure of a few million, they could bring services to some of the most scattered communities in Ireland, both roads and water services.
"Rural Ireland is not a burden on society and there is a mindset issue here.
"Without analysing the costs, they claim that rural services must be incredibly expensive but for a lot of reasons it is often very cheap to provide services in rural Ireland," he said
The farm advisory body Teagasc has started planning for a downturn in the construction industry which is likely to affect part-time farmers first working in building, the conference heard. Dr Cathal O'Donoghue, head of Teagasc's Rural Economy Research Centre, said his organisation was already working with other organisations to provide upskilling for farmers in the event of a downturn in the construction sector.
In the event of a "soft landing" in the sector, farmers would likely be hit very hard, and for that reason Teagasc was working with Fás and other agencies to plan for such an eventuality.