Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will make comments having listened to the debate. One relates to capital expenditure and the fact that the north and western regions have been designated as areas in decline by the European Commission. There is an opportunity because of this new designation. We have to positively discriminate in terms of investment. Does the ESRI support that for a region?

The ESRI officials talked about housing. One of the biggest issues I have come across is that we talk about the LDA and the big-ticket items, yet what I am looking at in my constituency and throughout the west is small towns and villages - settlement centres - where a person cannot build a house or get planning permission to build a house because they do not have a wastewater treatment plant. The person will not be allowed to build a single septic tank for each unit. That has been ruled out by An Bord Pleanála and the local authorities.

Now we have a situation where the growth centres around Galway city, including Craughwell, Corofin, Abbeyknockmoy or wherever they may be, are areas where we cannot build a house. We have areas where the wastewater infrastructure is absent but the way it will be delivered it is not even on anyone's agenda.

We talk about delivering houses, affordable houses, regional development and remote working and how all of this will help the regions. How do we marry all that up? Do the officials have any thoughts or comments on that? I believe it is a major area we have to look at. For instance, there is considerable debate about whether the western rail corridor should reopen north from Athenry to Claremorris to create a link between Ballina, Westport, Galway and Limerick. It is small money in the overall context, perhaps costing €150 million. It seems it is being pushed back. I believe it would create leverage in a green environment to create public transport and to regenerate the area. This is not only relevant for cities such as Limerick and Galway. We need to regenerate the towns like Tuam and the growth centres around there so that they can grow as well. A person can buy a house in Tuam for €100,000 less than in Galway city. That is what I call affordability. People can live there but they need to have that connection, a guarantee of a job and they need to be able to live there.