Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise a few short points about Dublin that are by no means exhaustive. The very last thing I want to do is talk down Dublin. Dublin is a phenomenal mid-sized European capital with huge success and potential and talking it down is the last thing we want to do. At the same time, we must be realistic about some of the challenges Dublin faces.

We often hear, correctly, about rural Ireland in the House but it is reasonable for Dublin Deputies to stand up and say we can do better and be more ambitious for Dublin than we sometimes have been to date. There are a few key points around that. The first is infrastructure. I refer in particular to Dublin Airport and some of the challenges with it.

It is not reasonable that we have set ourselves up as a modern economy with a trade model that invites foreign direct investment in the context of people coming here, setting up businesses and bringing employees to live and work here, but that those people cannot get taxis or cannot be confident of using their credit cards in taxi when they get to Dublin airport. It is not reasonable that if one goes to Dublin airport at 5 p.m. or 5.30 p.m. to catch a flight to any part of Europe, there is nowhere to get a sandwich. These things do not seem to be like a big deal, but can people imagine it happening at another airport? It is just not professional or good enough. These things should just work properly and easily. They do not involve the creation of new infrastructure; they are simply things working properly. This is a basic standard we should set for ourselves.

We have had the perceptions of Dublin and the sentiment towards it whereby there has been a great deal of talk recently about public order, how Dublin is perceived, whether it is more unsafe or perceived to be so, and on what happened during Covid-19 to influence that. An Garda Síochána used to do a public attitudes survey in respect of Dublin, but that has not been done since 2019. My view is that Dublin has changed a great deal during the Covid-19 period, and it has felt different. Whether it is different is another question, but it has felt different for a variety of reasons. Perhaps there are fewer people in the city on a day-to-day basis. It is very important that the sentiment tracker to which I refer be picked up again and be done now in order that we can understand how people in Dublin are really feeling. It is also important to ask business owners how they are feeling and what the sentiment is with businesses in Dublin day to day. I have spoken to shop owners, pub owners and people who work in the hospitality sector who have to try to get home at night regarding what there experience is. Are they in fear of public order problems or of experiencing them? Between public attitudes and business sentiment, it is very important that we ask people how they feel about Dublin in order to see how that has changed.

The next issue is the labour market. Every single part of the labour market, be it construction, tech, finance or hospitality, is under pressure. There is a circularity to our difficulties with housing and infrastructure that is compounding problems and limiting our ability to be ambitious for Dublin in so many different ways.

I visited the United States in recent months and I was struck, more than would be the case anywhere else, by the scale and volume and variety of rental accommodation that is available in that country. Quality amenities are provided in the context of the rental accommodation available to people living and working in different cities in the United States for whatever period they are there. We just do not have the same availability or range of accommodation in Dublin for the different people who want to live here. We cannot provide the sheer volume of accommodation that is needed.

All of these things are circular. Ultimately, however, Dublin is a mid-sized European capital. Its topography has not changed as quickly as its demographic, its income or in the context of the number of people working here. We must set the highest ambition for Dublin on a comparative basis. It is not the case that Dublin or Wicklow are competing with each other or that Finglas and Tallaght are competing with each other. Dublin is competing with the other capital cities in Europe for international investment and for the best of people, businesses and employment opportunities. Dublin is competing with Amsterdam. In that context, decisions are being made around the world about where to locate businesses, employment and opportunity. I want that opportunity for people in Ireland who want to remain here, who want to make a contribution and who want to have a great life here. Such a life is possible.

We have not been ambitious enough for Dublin. We need to set our ambition higher with regard to infrastructure and housing, and we should do so in an unashamed way. This ambition should be set as high as possible in the context of ensuring that everything we have works properly and correctly. We should test and assess sentiment and see what people really feel about the city and, what is working what is not. We need to be honest about the things that are not working. We have to set our ambition for housing at the highest possible level, with a broad range of different types of accommodation. Such accommodation should be easily accessible to the range of people who are here, not just in terms of price but also when it comes to flexibility in respect of the different rental models that are available. It is only by understanding that circularity and talking to the groups that can design an ambitious Dublin in order to see where we are and where we should be that we can achieve what is best, not only for the people of Dublin but also for the people of Ireland in general. Dublin is the engine, whether we want to accept that or not, and we must start treating it as such in a serious way.

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