Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and witnesses for all the detailed answers. They were most helpful. First, may I remind witnesses of the question in respect of Irish Water and the overlap of the two plans. On the socio-economic disadvantage and the issue of the concentration of population in Dublin, the conversation was really interesting. For me, the unplanned over-concentration of population and economic development in Dublin is a very bad thing, both for the city and for others. However, over-concentration, even in a planned way is only a good thing if that is what people want.

While there are people who live and grew up in rural Ireland who want to gravitate to major population centres, and some who want to emigrate, there are many who do not. As policy makers, part of our responsibility is to find ways to give people that choice. If a person grows up in Inishowen, he or she should have a real choice as to whether to live, work and raise a family there or migrate elsewhere. Despite the fact that population migration to major cities in Europe is a reality, it is not necessarily a good thing or something we should support with public policy. I suspect that part of the reason it is happening is that the drivers of economic development have been large foreign direct investment companies, which are always going to locate in large urban centres such as Dublin or Cork, and there is not much one can do about that.

I am not sure that subsuming the spatial reality of socioeconomic disadvantage within the overall framework of people, place and economic opportunity is enough. The one thing the State can control is where it invests in public infrastructure. We are going to have a profound transformation of our water infrastructure over the next 20 or 30 years, whatever happens in the short-term debate about the funding model. We are going to move from a large number of water treatment plants to a much smaller number of larger treatment plants. Where we put those plants will decide who gets to work in them. If we decide to locate them in parts of the country where, infrastructurally, they make sense but where there is also a demand for jobs, it will make a big difference. I would like the plan to contain a mapping of socioeconomic disadvantage and its geographical reality. We know that some of it is regionally balanced, and in the south east unemployment levels reflect this, but Dublin is one of the most socially segregated capital cities in Europe and many of the infrastructural decisions taken over the years reinforce that. We have a DART along the south east coast in what has been the most affluent part of the city for a long time and this has reinforced the socioeconomic advantage for those of us who had the fortune to grow up in that part of the city.

To what extent are the spatial elements of socioeconomic disadvantage mainstreamed in the overall plan? If they are not, can we map these and overlay that map with other aspects such as energy, water or public transport infrastructure? That would be a real change in how we think about these things. My fear is that, in common with our equality framework, it is socioeconomically blind and, unlike other countries, we have a tendency not to want to be too explicit about it. I do not suggest that this should be to the detriment of the sustainable development and environmental goals or regional balance. I just think there needs to be a greater emphasis on it.