Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for allowing me to contribute this morning. I am not a member of the committee but I am deputising for Deputy Imelda Munster.

I welcome everyone from all the chambers across the north west, the midlands and down into Mayo who are here to convey a simple message. It is a region that has been left behind because of an infrastructural deficit. All of Ireland has a difficulty in that we are well below par as a developed country in our level of infrastructural spending. That is a general comment and it would be recognised internationally. It is something we need to address. It is widely known that if there is activity it creates opportunity and that opportunity creates more activity and so the spiral goes upwards. The difficulty for the vast number of people living in the north west is that the spiral has either stopped or started going in the opposite direction, going downward. In order to arrest that, we need investment from Government. It is often said that we can only spend what we have got, that the economy is like a household budget. That is not true. The reality is that when money is invested into an economy and into infrastructure such as this, it has a return or a pay back and that pay back in the long term is often better than what was put in. Even looking at the short term, road building might not be the best example but it is an example. If we spend €100 million, the activity that creates through taxation, through income tax, through VAT and so on, there could be a 40% return on that €100 million in the first year. It is not really a spend of €100 million. There is also the additional activity created on the outskirts which creates more, because all the people who go to work on the road will buy their diesel and petrol and go for sandwiches. They are living and creating economic activity in their local economy.

Government investment in infrastructure of this nature is not a cost. It is an investment and one which has a return which is much greater than the cost. This is one of the big things missing from this conversation. The north west brings to mind Sligo, Yeats country, surfing, Donegal, Carrick-on-Shannon and boating on the Shannon; there is all this tourism in those areas, but to this one can add the opportunities for economic development. Recently, I was speaking to a senior manager in a company in Britain. They were considering moving some of their manufacturing because of Brexit. This person had a connection with Leitrim and was talking about trying to convince their company to move some of the production to the north west. The problem they hit against was the travel time of their product to the port. They said they would really like to do it but we want to be near Dublin so that we can be near the port. That was the immediate obstacle they had to overcome. That is not an obstacle put in place by the people who live in the north west, but by under-investment for many years. To turn that around, not only do we need to put the investment in, but we need to emphasise the positives of the region. The production economics in an area which has a lower cost of living, lower rents, a greater quality of life and, though it might seem airy-fairy, a happier workforce because of those things, are things that cannot be bought. It cannot be measured in a metric by economists but makes a real difference to people's lives, the 14% of Irish people, some 650,000 people of that region. For quite a small investment by Government, although it might seem like a lot of money, we could make the north west and the west into a region that will pay huge dividends and contribute greatly to the overall economic advancement of the country. As my colleagues noted earlier, access to that capital is there at a very low interest rate.

The argument the witnesses have put forward today is welcome and is pushing an open door. Representatives from all parties would say that. Our difficulty is trying to convince the Minister who unfortunately has not been open for this to happen. We welcome that they have strengthened our hand in this and do what we can to raise it with the Minister, the Taoiseach or the Government. We have a Taoiseach from the west and before he relinquishes his responsibilities as Taoiseach, maybe it would be one of his priorities. It would be very welcome if he did that. Maybe we could put that to him on his return from Canada.

Between the presentations and the questions which have been asked already, I have no questions to ask and there is nothing else to be said except that the big issue is about convincing Government that this is not a cost it is an investment which will have a return. The witnesses have done a good job on that and I thank them for coming here and making that clear.