Growth plan can help the west solve problems, says bishop

The "crusade" for the west continues. That's the response from he Bishop of Killala, Dr Thomas Finnegan, to the Government's National Development Plan.

No parish, however rural or remote, should contemplate a further debilitating decline of its population, and the minimum target should be that the census of 2006 would record a population at least as high as that of 1996, Dr Finnegan has said. The bishop and his associates involved in the Council for the West believe the £40 billion plan, published last month, offers a good opportunity. "We do not expect the Government to solve our problems. We do expect it to make it possible for us to solve them. It now looks as if this can happen," Dr Finnegan said in a message to priests and parish councils.

The council is preparing a summary of the document for distribution to parishes throughout the region. The summary will focus specifically on the sections dealing with balanced regional and rural development, the objective being to "secure early delivery of the promises", the bishop has said.

He acknowledges the plan has already been welcomed by the Community Platform, representing more than 20 organisations, including the Conference of Religious of Ireland and the Society of St Vincent de Paul.

It now appears that Developing the West Together, as the bishops' initiative was originally called, could move into its second phase, with the grassroots availing of the expertise offered by the Council for the West and the Western Development Commission, he said.

Dr Finnegan said the scale of human need in the countryside could often be "hidden - invisible". Only the people on the ground really knew the level of rural disadvantage that still existed.

He referred in his message to a recent study published by the Mercy Sisters of the Western Province, which pointed out that the "present laudatory assessments of the positive impact of the Irish economy's success are, to a considerable extent, false".

Recalling the questions he posed about participative democracy at the first meetings of the western bishops' campaign almost eight years ago, Dr Finnegan said it was clear from our "increasing knowledge" of the EU that there was a direct correlation between the empowerment of local communities and local development and economic growth.

And, in feisty tones, he saw an important role for the Catholic Church. The church's social teaching did not accept a neat division between it and the state when it came to the future of society.

"There is no such watertight division," Dr Finnegan aid. "It is absurd to talk of a just society divorced from God."