Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. The concept of creating a counterbalance through the Atlantic economic corridor to the overdevelopment on the east coast is not targeted properly in the NPF. That needs to be the big ticket item for us in the western half of the country from Cork through Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Donegal to Derry. The technological university status granted to the colleges in Galway, Letterkenny and Sligo is part of that concept. The Minister for Rural and Community Development has appointed a task force to develop the Atlantic economic corridor. The concept is supported by all of the chambers of commerce in the region, but the task force's recommendations need to be stitched into the NPF, as otherwise they will become a separate arrangement. The Atlantic economic corridor is the bee's knees in the programme for Government and exactly what we need.

According to the Western Development Commission, in excess of 16,000 people living the county travel into Galway city every day to work. We must examine how they get in and out of the city. They do so with great difficulty. In some cases, they have to stay in a car park for an hour before they can travel home from work. We are creating a plan for the next 20 years.

I see this from the IDA's perspective. It says it will create a park, but there is never joined-up thinking on how people are going to get in and out of it. For instance, in Galway, the success of Parkmore Industrial Estate is that there are 6,000 people are working there, but there is a single road going into and out of it. It is absolutely incredible that there has not been proper forward planning. We cannot blame the local authorities. The IDA, the local authorities and Departments must work together to make sure that when we are drawing up a master plan, the roads are planned alongside the IDA parks, so that when they are fully operational they actually work properly, rather than the situation we have at the moment.

We have spoken about improving towns and villages. I do not see enough meat on the bones. I would like to know how we are going to improve towns like Dunmore, Milltown in my area, or Headford, where there was a large number of shops which are now closed. There is nothing in them. People have moved out of the centre of the towns. There is nothing tangible to incentivise people to come back to live and work in these towns, and to support local retail. If we do not get the population back into the heart of the towns, they will die.

I am very much against positioning supermarkets and big shops on the edge of towns. That creates a doughnut effect. That must be nipped in the bud. We have had enough of it as it really is destroying the centres of towns. It has had this effect in England. We must have no more of it, and we must make sure we are actually creating shopping areas within the towns, not on their outskirts.

One other issue I have a concern about is that we really heavily on the local authorities to deliver all these plans. I can say here and now that the local authorities are not being funded sufficiently to do that. They do not have the resources. They have been stripped of a huge amount of their expertise over the last ten years due to staff retiring and people not coming into the service. There has been a huge loss of expertise. With all due respect to the Minister of State, I would say that one of the biggest problems in our housing situation is our reliance on local authorities which do not have in-house expertise in planning, environmental assessment, procurement, delivering projects or managing budgets. We have to examine this. We must resource local authorities properly if we are going to rely on them. The national planning framework states that local authorities are going to do this, that and the other. We are loading them with a lot of responsibilities. Galway County Council is at breaking point financially, and it is not being supported. Even though there are wage increases, funds are not being paid out by the central Government. That is absolutely wrong. If we are going to rely on the local authorities, we must put them in a position where they can deliver.

I return the issue of the Atlantic economic corridor. In the west or north-west of Ireland, of which Deputy McLoughlin has spoken, or down in the south, the biggest problem is the lack of proper broadband. There are not the sufficient water and waste water services to take additional capacity. In many cases, there are not proper roads. We must also examine the rail network, which we are not using. I refer particularly to the connection between Claremorris and Athenry, which could be opened up to freight services and commuter services. I always say that the biggest and cleanest artery to get people in and out of Eyre Square in Galway city is rail. We are not using it to connect with north County Galway or the east. With 16,000 people coming into the city everyday to work, we need to look at this in a more serious way.

When we talk about enterprise and how it should work, the IDA has a big role to play. I refer to Athenry, which has been in the news lately, and towns like Loughrea, Gort and Tuam, which are situated along the new roadway that has been built in Galway. There is more potential along the west coast to Ennis. The IDA parks are already there. In Tuam, planning permissions have run out, and there is a 40-acre site there with nothing in it. Any industry in Tuam has been there for years and proven that it is sustainable. We have fine industry there, but we could have a lot more of it. Rather than trying to squeeze it all into Galway city, we should be looking at the towns.

We have to look at how we carry out the business of planning. I have had discussions on this with Mr. Niall Cussen and Mr. Paul Hogan, who are present. Many of the frailties in our planning have been highlighted by the events surrounding Apple's application to build a data centre in Athenry. We must not carry out a quick fix, but whatever we do, we must change the way we do planning business. I do not necessarily mean creating shortcuts but we must provide definitive timelines, so that anyone coming to this country and looking for planning permission will know that there is a definitive timeline by which their project will or will not be given the green light rather a process that drags on for years. We are paying the cost of that at the moment, because we got very bad publicity from the Apple affair. I look forward to working with the Minister of State and all the other Government Departments to bring forward legislation to ensure we can tell potential investors that their projects have a fair chance of being approved and the time it will take to decide on it. That is very important.