There was an "information poverty" in rural Ireland, the Labour spokesman on agriculture, Mr Willie Penrose, claimed.

More and more areas of economic activity required information technology skills and access to the Internet, he said. For job-creation in rural areas, particularly jobs in services, it was essential to equip people, especially the unemployed, with basic skills in information technology.

It was sometimes assumed, he added, that older unemployed people might find it difficult to learn information technology, but it was important to bear in mind that the fastest-growing group of Internet users in the USA was the over-65s.

Mr Penrose, who was speaking during a debate on the Government's White Paper on rural development, said that the proposed regional assemblies would need to be effective to ensure that the concerns of rural citizens could be articulated effectively and responded to.

In rural Ireland, he added, house prices were rising rapidly and affluent people from the cities and abroad were purchasing many semi-derelict houses as holiday homes. "There is a danger that local people may not be able to afford to compete with outside buyers for houses."

The Fine Gael spokesman on agriculture, Mr Paul Connaughton, said that Leader programmes would run out of money within the next few months. "I acknowledge any money the Government spends on rural development, but why does the Minister not make some of the £55 million of the national development fund available to those programmes?"

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Noel Davern, said the rural development policy agenda, as defined in the White Paper, was that all Government policies and interventions were directed towards improving the physical, economic and social conditions of people living in the open countryside, in coastal areas, towns and villages, and in smaller urban centres outside the five major urban areas.