Mr. Niall Cussen:

In his response, the Chairman set out very clearly and effectively the range of the challenges we must address in framing the national planning framework. A very useful critique of what worked and did not work with the spatial strategy is, as Mr. Hogan outlined, available on our website. At the time the national spatial strategy was launched in 2002, many subsequent steps were taken to support it. As they started to gain momentum - I am thinking of the national development plan 2007-2013, which was very much in the image of the national spatial strategy - far more significant economic challenges came along and to some extent, there was a lot of pressure on resources to exactly carry out the disruptive type or prudent, plan-led forward investment in infrastructure around which the Chairman's thesis pivots. We have the good fortune of having recovered economically to the point where resources are again available to consider those sorts of new directions we can take in terms of regional planning and infrastructure investment policy. Hopefully, in the coming months, we will see the opening of new road connections between Limerick and Galway and indeed the connecting to wider parts of the south Mayo-east Galway area. This is a crucial step in building an economic critical mass in the west which is not so much a competitor to Dublin but a complement to it. The Chairman is right that jobs constitute a key piece of this. This bringing together of infrastructure-----