Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to the Minister for forgetting in my opening remarks to wish her well in her new role. I sincerely wish her well in her new role.

The Minister mentioned the national planning framework in her opening statement. My part of the country is Limerick and people there believe that the Government has got things completely wrong. Outside of Dublin and Cork, the view is that centres of population will be unable to grow and expand adequately and as they had planned heretofore. That realisation has begun to dawn on them and the chief executive officer of Limerick City and County Council has made some alarming comments. The city and county council is preparing an impact analysis on how the national planning framework, NPF, will have a hugely negative and long-term impact on the plans to develop Limerick, and the same applies to Galway. Yesterday, this matter was discussed at a meeting attended by Fianna Fáil's Front Bench and by a collection of people from throughout the country.

The view is that the national planning framework will impact on Galway, Sligo and Waterford. The impact will not be as great on Dublin or Cork because there is greater headroom, in addition to the recent boundary extension. Let me flag for Mr. Shanahan the views we are picking up. My understanding of the process is that ultimately it will be a Cabinet decision.

I will now comment on the linked issues of the impact the provision of housing has on inward investment and the data available on site visits. I understand the first objective is to get those who make decisions on foreign direct investment to visit Ireland and then to try to accommodate their preferences. From the figures we have available for the numbers of site visits to the end of the third quarter of 2017, the tale they tell is that rural Ireland - areas outside the major population centres of Limerick, Cork, Galway and Athlone - do not receive enough attention. I know that staff in IDA Ireland are trying to do their best, but they will have to try to find a way to do do better and get more people to visit, in particular the Border counties. If the Minister will allow me to do so, I will speak on behalf of her constituency of Cavan-Monaghan. There were two site visits to Cavan and one to Monaghan. I am sure that is a source of concern for her as a constituency Deputy in the first instance. When one looks at the CSO statistics for the numbers of vacant dwellings throughout the country that formed part of the recent census, they should be a further argument to make on the attractiveness of locations outside Dublin and the major centres where affordable housing is available. Will Mr. Shanahan comment on this? Why are the Border counties, with the exception of County Louth, to which there were 14 site visits, at the lower end of the scale when it comes to site visits? There have been two site visits to counties Cavan and Donegal and one to County Monaghan. Is Brexit a complicating factor? Will Mr. Shanahan comment on how he intends to address the imbalance? We accept that he has to get the decision makers into the country, but many of them look at locating in the capital. If one looks at the underlying statistics, one will see that 40% of GDP is generated in the greater Dublin area, whereas in the United Kingdom only 20% of GDP is generated in the greater London area. We are experiencing a big imbalance which I know presents a huge challenge to IDA Ireland, but how will it try to rectify the figures? There were 34 site visits to County Westmeath, effectively to Athlone which spills into County Roscommon, to which there were only two site visits. Would it be possible to structure itineraries in such a way that delegates visiting Limerick would also visit County Tipperary to locations outside the main hot spots?