Islands potential

Mrs MacDonald also highlighted the role of the Crofting Commission had to be seriously questioned.

She continued: “We need to stand back, with everyone working together, to recognise our natural assets, which are enormous, and then adopt a strategic approach to their development.

“It should be seen as a great challenge which I want to be part of. In recent years, we have had a lamentable lack of co-operation between the MP and the comhairle. That is pure stupidity and must end.”

She said that the “Islands Deal” which Comhairle nan Eilean Siar has been working for and which both UK and Scottish governments are being asked to support could be the platform for a new approach to promoting island produce.

Mrs MacDonald said: “We now have well over half of the Western Isles in community ownership. That creates potential for a far more strategic approach to land use, food production and marketing.

“I strongly believe in promoting the Hebridean brand but that requires facilities within the islands so that we are exporting finished products, with value added, from both the land and the sea.

“If we get the basics right then there could be more livestock, a year-round slaughterhouse as well as fish processing to create products which are truly Hebridean, traditional skills would be maintained, and so on. But none of it will happen without a fresh, joined-up approach.”

The Labour candidate said: “It is a source of great frustration that we have so many world-class assets, including our pure environment, yet we also have population decline and, in some parts of the islands, barely enough people to sustain basic services.

“It need not be like this but I believe political leadership, with a small ‘p’ and working across all boundaries, is desperately needed. That is the approach I would take and it is one that offers Western Isles voters a very clear choice.”

“Harness our islands' potential” says Ealasaid MacDonald

3 June 2017

Labour candidate Ealasaid MacDonald said she would, if elected, work to create a Western Isles land and natural resources forum to boost the local economy.

The harvest from land and sea is an opportunity to “turn our great assets into jobs and prosperity.”

Mrs MacDonald said that “huge potential” was not being fulfilled because of poor representation and “a complete absence of joined-up thinking in how to make the most of what we have.”

She said crofting should be at the heart of that approach rather than being left to “fade away within an empty shell of regulation.”