Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I again disagree with Deputy Eamon Ryan. Not all areas have the luxury of the roads about which the Deputy is speaking. Unless we put a proper regional plan in place, the cities will get worse. There is general agreement in the committee regarding infrastructure gaps. In his opening remarks, Mr. Doheny outlined the rather bizarre coalition that has come together around this. I cannot imagine that CIF and ICTU agree on too much at times but there is agreement on infrastructure gaps. Mr. Doheny spoke about the pipeline drying up. To return to what Deputy Lisa Chambers said about careers, the number of CAO applications for engineering this year has fallen. Is this connected to the point made by Mr. Lucey about the civil engineering pipeline drying up? Transport Infrastructure Ireland appeared before this committee last week. The presentation was utterly depressing in respect of what is not in its pipeline. Roads take between eight and 13 years to develop. How are we going to address that urgently? Have we gone too far in terms of the underfunding of infrastructure to avoid the pipeline drying up for a couple of years?