Fianna Fáil’s Éamon Ó Cuív has “complimented” Labour for “implementing Fianna Fáil policies” when he launched his party’s manifesto for rural Ireland on Monday.

The Opposition party’s agriculture spokesman said if the current Government was returned, he hoped it would implement Fianna Fáil’s rural policy rather than its own “Charter for Rural Ireland”, which was launched last week.

“The amazing thing about this Government is that they had the good sense not to follow, with the Labour Party, their own policies in the last election.

“Actually what they’ve done is, on the macro scale, to implement basically a plan that was put in place by us in the dying days of the previous Government,” Mr Ó Cuív said.

“I have to compliment the Labour Party on one thing: implementing Fianna Fáil policy, and literally ditching their own policy as soon as they walked in the door to Government.

“There was an awful falsity about it, telling the people they were going to do one thing and doing another. But I do have to say they were dead right not to follow their own policies. They were dead right to adopt Fianna Fáil policies.”

Responding to claims at the Labour conference at the weekend that Fianna Fáil had crashed the economy, Mr O Cuív said: “We had a very, very severe downturn and as somebody who was in the Cabinet at that time I sincerely regret any part we played in that.”

Broadband

Fianna Fáil is proposing the roll out of fibre broadband to all rural homes and businesses, along with universal access to 4G mobile phone services throughout the country.

The party wants to lower the pupil/teacher ratio in small schools and an improvement in school transport services.

The maintenance of rural GP cover and an increase in the GPs’ rural practice allowance is also proposed.

Fianna Fáil’s community affairs spokesman Bobby Aylward said the party was committed to strengthening the Garda force to 15,000 members over five years.

“Rural Ireland is living in fear. A lot of elderly people now, they lock their door at six o’clock in the evening and they don’t open it until the morning until the brightness [comes] again,” Mr Aylward said.

“The first thing that we have to have is police, is police people on the ground.”

The party has proposed the enactment of legislation to introduce longer sentences for those who assault elderly people.

It also wants to see legislation for mandatory minimum sentences for those who are convicted of burglary offences.

A proposal to install CCTV cameras on motorway exits to detect criminal activity is also contained in the manifesto.

Fianna Fáil wants to see rural Garda stations maintained and “opened regularly to the public”.