Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Many people were not born at the time. I was on one of those much-criticised junkets. It was a learning experience and one of the first things we learnt was in Stuttgart, headquarters of Mercedes manufacturing, where 20,000 people worked. The benefit was visible as one approached the city, one knew there was a big player in the area because so many ancillary industries had piggybacked on to it to make it much bigger.

We have to do that in this country. I use the example of the Shannon development zone which was very effective in years gone by. It was a co-ordinated plan and those of us who were not from that area travelled there to see what was available. The nearby airport was used very effectively at that time, although circumstances have changed since. It had a co-ordinated plan which affected the whole region. Immediately one drove into the area one could sense that there was something afoot.

We have to replicate that performance in particular throughout the midlands, the mid-west, the south and in the north west. I agree with the references to the development in Longford which is a worthwhile experience, a great development and a great proposal and we hope that it goes well. It is up to the local people there to drive it on from there. There was an equally welcome investment in the Waterford-Kilkenny area in recent times and also in Tipperary and various other regions. It is the beginning but there is a long way to go. The geographic isolation needs to be addressed. The social and economic deprivation to which my colleague referred has to be addressed in cities and towns, in both urban and rural areas.

When one is in the trenches for a while - as we all try to be - one notices things in a way that the people living there all the time do not necessarily notice. For example, I remember canvassing in a by-election - I will not say where - in an urban area and seeing the children coming home from school and studying in stairwells that were littered with disused needles and various other items and castoffs - not the proper environment nor the kind of environment in which we would expect our children to excel. It is not fair to them and there is no necessity for it. We need to spend much more time addressing those social issues, including that kind of deprivation that forces children at first or second level of schooling to study in an environment that is anything but conducive to study. Those coming from that bacground will be at a disadvantage when they go into the workplace in order to compete with others. I support the remarks made by my colleague, Senator Aideen Hayden. There is a great deal of scope for improvement that we have not tapped into. It applies to all our cities and to some rural areas.

I referred to the question of anchor investors. We need them, we need to look after them, we need to ensure they stay here and we need to ensure they continue to come. No industry lasts forever in that times change and we have to be prepared. In the context of planning we need to encourage our local authorities to try to ensure that they plan sensitively in order to give the best possible opportunity to those providing jobs in order for them to do so in the respective regions. The local authorities should not impose restrictions to the extent that people will decide it is not worth the risk and they will go elsewhere.

We need to prioritise the issues that impact most on us. For instance, in the urban areas, access to proper areas of recreation is an issue that must be dealt with to a far greater extent than has been the case. The Government is doing this but we must improve on it. Access to sport is a means of deflecting attention from other activities that are not so constructive and certainly not so useful in the workplace. I refer to basic requirements such as access to water. Water services will become a huge issue in the future, much more than we have ever experienced. Major industries coming to this country and existing indigenous industries will rely heavily on high quality water supply and instant availability. They do not want to wait for two, three or ten years before they get it. We need to have the best of modern telecommunications such as broadband available throughout all the regions. In the area of transport there has been reference to congestion and rightly so. In particular this is the case in the eastern region all the time. We need to implement counter-measures. For instance, the M50 any morning at rush hour is jammed with traffic. It reached over-capacity a long time ago. We need to plan for the future, not just for the moment. The Naas dual carriageway stood the test of time for far longer than some of the more recent introductions to that area.

Climate change is an important issue which has the potential to impact positively or negatively on our most important industry, in particular, in the context of economic recovery. In the recent past, during the boom, for instance, little regard was had for the agricultural sector and nobody wanted to know about it. Sons and daughters from the agricultural community wanted to get into development or go anywhere else other than agriculture. When the crunch came, it showed that our basic industries were the ones that carried the responsibility and had the ability to recover much more quickly than any other sector. I agree entirely with and I strongly support every effort that can be made to ensure that we comply with the requirements and that we do not incur carbon penalties to the extent that this might happen, resulting in the obvious negative impact on the whole industry and associated industries. We must maximise the availability of realisable alternative energy because it is on that basis that we will be able to compete with all others.