Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I neglected to recall Anthony Burke's name earlier. I pay tribute to him in particular and the fact he went to the gardaí and gave them the crucial information that enabled them to apprehend the man who carried out the terrible murders of Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee in Sligo. I pay tribute to him and recognise An Garda Síochána and its work.

What we are doing and will continue to do is make balanced regional development happen in Ireland. That is something we are doing under this Government, and which we did under its predecessors. In the last census, for the first time in quite some time, the population in every county increased. We have not seen that for quite some time, and that is of real significance. We have the Department of Rural and Community Development under the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, with a fund of €1 billion to invest in rural areas in particular. Everyone who travels the country can now see the impact of that on the ground in towns and villages all over Ireland. We have seen employment rise in every county, which again is something of real importance and significance.

It is not just the employment rate going down; the number of actual jobs in each county has gone up. We have seen the development of the technological universities, which make a huge difference. The Deputy will be familiar with Atlantic Technological University, ATU, which has a campus in Sligo.

Through the IDA property programme, all over the country we are building advanced factories, so that if we take a potential investor to a regional town, they can see a business park or building ready for them to get into. We see how that has worked in Castlebar, Kilkenny and other places. The national broadband plan is connecting every home, farm and business to fibre, something virtually no other country is doing, and will really make a difference to running a business in rural Ireland or a farm and being able to access online healthcare and education.

Regarding the infrastructure budget, the biggest single investment signed off on this year for any part of the country is the upgrade of the N5, the Tulsk to Scramoge road. That is a €500 million investment in improving access to the west.

Those are the kind of things we are doing. Of course, we need to do much more. It is a challenge for any country to spread development away from the capital and the big cities. Almost all countries struggle with it - look at Copenhagen in Denmark and Vienna in Austria – but we are getting some good results.

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