Cathal Barry and Mags Gargan
‘Brain drain’ threatening many parishes
The Government has been accused of neglecting rural Ireland to such an extent that many people see no hope for the future, priests at the coalface have told The Irish Catholic.
Clare-based Fr Harry Bohan said rural communities “have been so badly neglected that it is nearly impossible to know where to start”.
He said many rural parishes “feel seriously hurt” by politicians. “The neglect has been appalling,” the Parish Priest of Six-Mile-Bridge said.
Bishop Christopher Jones said many people in rural parishes felt that the Government had “forgotten” about their communities.
“The focus is on the cities. It is good that we have employment again but it is so bad to drive through rural Ireland and see what we saw back in the 1950s with houses closing, young people emigrating and no football teams,” he said.
“I really feel an awful lot of communities have had a brain drain. The youngest and the best are emigrating because there is no employment for them. Communities are left without the energy and the enterprise of the youth,” he added.
Prominent sociologist Fr Micheál Mac Gréil SJ criticised the Government for what he described as “neglecting” the three pillars of rural society; the family, the neighbourhood and the community. Fr Mac Gréil, a seasoned campaigner, also claimed that it was “a basic policy” of the Government to “gentrify the West of Ireland rather than develop it”.
Referring to the proliferation of holiday homes which are vacant for large parts of the year, he said “the plan seems to be to industrialise Ireland in the East and to gentrify Ireland in the West and South West at the total expense of development there”.
“That is something we have to challenge because otherwise we will have a very small population in rural parts of the country” with young people forced to move away, he said.
Fr Mac Gréil warned that “the priority should be to have young people who were educated in the West of Ireland working there”.
Clare-based Fr Peter O’Loughlin said that while there were many “challenges” and “drawbacks” to living in rural Ireland, there was a “fantastic spirit” among people living there, but they were in need of more support.
“Certainly the spirit of the community in rural Ireland is something that is first class. If that dies part of what we are as a people will be gone,” the Parish Priest of Kilmihil said.
He said that many local communities were struggling with the loss of post offices, garda stations and even a local doctor and felt that the Government may have to incentivise GPs to serve rural areas.
Donegal-based Fr Edward Gallagher insisted that the “importance of saving rural Ireland” had to be “impressed upon on the candidates” in the upcoming General Election. “The Government talks about bringing down unemployment but it is emigration that brought down unemployment. You often get the impression that the Government’s interest in rural Ireland is limited,” the Parish Priest of Kilcar said.
Bishop Jones said he found it “astonishing” that “there is no voice speaking out” against the decline of rural Ireland. “At least in the old days you had some very good leaders who were campaigners but not anymore. It is as if it is taken for granted.”
