When it comes to funding and investment, West Cork is too often treated as the poor relation.

We are talking about a substantial geographical region – while there is no official boundary the West Cork electoral area accounts for 2,195sqkm.

Yet it is expected to manage with less, asked to make do while public spending and capital investment seems to drift elsewhere.

Too often, the pattern is the same: promises made in Leinster House, progress discussed in council chambers.

But real resources arrive slowly in drip-drip fashion, or not at all. And when they don’t, the impact lands not on spreadsheets but on families, patients, farmers, students, and anyone trying to get on with their life who can’t just opt out.

An Garda Síochána has just seen 206 new recruits graduate from Templemore. Just four of them are assigned to County Cork, but not one of them for West Cork.

It’s a stark example of the reality of our public services and the public not getting the resources they deserve. It’s a reality politicians including Michael Collins TD frequently bang the drum about.

Right now, the damage from underinvestment is most visible in health.

West Cork Counselling and Support Service has had its core funding cut from under it. It means people in the region are set to lose a vital service that has provided low-cost counselling and psychotherapy for the past 20 years: a total of 77 people are currently accessing those services. How will they cope when affordable therapy is gone?

On a public waiting list, it can take over a year to be referred.

That kind of delay doesn’t just add stress, it risks turning treatable difficulties into worsening crises. It shows what many already fear: health investment is in a bad way and the consequences are being paid for by those with little strength left to absorb it.

The same pattern is clearly visible on our patchwork roads.

The N71 is chronically under-funded, with potholes and surface damage across what is supposed to be a national route. For many locals a short drive becomes a test of vehicle durability and personal safety.

And it also increases costs for local commuters and contractors, undermines confidence in essential infrastructure, and chips away at the day-to-day connectivity our community relies on, especially in the more remote areas.

Investment in public transport, or lack thereof, also leaves a gaping hole.

Noel O’Donovan has emphasised the need for action, calling for the return of the public railway from Cork city to West Cork, even if it makes a loss.

The argument is simple: the State has a duty to provide these services to the people who live here and the businesses that depend on access.

The same goes for funding shortfall in education.

Last year, our paper reported the dire conditions at a Clonakilty school where staff and pupils were plagued by dry rot, mould and a rat infestation.

If not the public, who is paying for all the shortfalls, a tech billionaire feeling generous? We deserve better

Fines pointless

IN recent days Cork South West TD Christopher O’Sullivan has warned of new byelaws banning the use of disposable barbecues, suggesting fines as hefty as €1,000 for those who flout them.

He makes a valid point about our national parks and how we must respect them. But this has echoes of the plan to ban e-scooters for minors and regulate their usage for adults.

How many times have you come across a park ranger while on a day out, in West Cork or elsewhere? Who will enforce these byelaws?

It was argued that the e-scooter ban will do nothing to curb illegal usage because the only ones who will abide by the new law are law-abiding citizens.

The same can be said for disposable barbecues. The only ones who will stop using them are the responsible citizens who would have carefully extinguished them and taken them home with them in any case. The law flouters will, I fear, continue to flout the law with reckless abandon.