Labour was urged by Mr Sean O hArgain (Kerry South) to shake off its image of an urban dominated party.
"In the process, we can undermine the two right wing parties who have left rural Ireland in the state that it is in today."
He believed that one of the greatest challenges facing the party and the State was to devise a strategy for the survival and development of rural Ireland.
"I say survival deliberately because research done in my own area of south west Kerry shows a drop in population of 56 per cent between 1926 and 1991."