Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

From my reading of the plan, everything is focused on the cities, followed by big towns, small towns and rural Ireland. As provided for in this plan, and in light of the Flemish decree, severe restrictions are to come into effect in relation to one-off housing. The thrust of policy is to try to control one-off housing. Nobody wants to stop people who want to live in towns and villages from doing so. There are no housing need forms to be completed by people who want to live in a town or village. When Minister, I introduced housing need because I did not want to see unrestricted housing development but this plan, in terms of the obtuse language used therein, introduces many further restrictions on rural living, including in parishes like St. Thomas's in south Galway that have produced fantastic hurling teams, and the many other areas that are totally dispersed. There is nothing wrong with these areas. They have huge capacity for growth because the schools can take more pupils and people provide their own infrastructure and as such they do not need huge State investment.

The plan repeatedly references focusing the investment in the major cities. When it comes to roads, the focus is on major inter-urban routes. The vast majority of people using the Galway-Dublin motorway do not come from Galway city. Many of them join it at different locations along the route. The focus in the plan is on major inter-urban routes rather than major inter-regional routes. There are people who travel from Mayo to Galway to take the Galway-Dublin route. The focus in this plan is on urban infrastructure. One needs to read this plan carefully. I have not only taken the time to read it carefully, but I have made a detailed submission on it. It is cleverly written. In terms of infrastructure proposals, the largest pieces of infrastructure to be provided in rural Ireland are greenways and blueways, for which I thank the Minister of State, but we need roads and railways as well as greenways and blueways. This proposal is more leprechaun policy in regard to rural Ireland. Of course we need greenways and blueways and nice urban coastal walks from Balbriggan to Bray, but we also need the basic infrastructure that people require to enable them to do their daily business.