Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Professor Kinsella from Limerick. We are very happy to have his expertise in the room with us. I thank him for his time and for travelling up. I want to speak a little about the potential for leveraging our sovereign wealth to develop critical infrastructure. A previous contributor spoke about the green infrastructure that will be built in the coming years.

Some years ago, when I was a fitter man, I cycled up the coast of Norway. I have to say it is not something I will do again because it was quite an arduous journey at the wrong time of the year. I happened to meet some executives of an oil company who spoke about the Norwegian story and how they discovered oil in the 1960s when it was a poor nation. Unlike other countries that discovered oil it leveraged the wealth to develop infrastructure among other things. We might seek to leverage in some way the vast wind energy resource that we have. It could mean wealth accruing to the country in the coming decades. How would we use it? Would it be best if we spent it for the benefit of the nation or put it aside and spend it at a future date via a sovereign wealth fund?

I am interested in Professor Kinsella's views on infrastructure. The Cathaoirleach Gníomhach and I speak regularly about rail infrastructure up the west coast of Ireland. We and Deputy Conway-Walsh would like to see that infrastructure built. Sometimes it is not politically expedient to invest in rail infrastructure because it is a long-term project. It often makes sense to build roads and the work on roads is very visible. Rail is the poor relation of Irish transport infrastructure. Perhaps we should leverage through a sovereign wealth fund the wealth we are accruing to develop the critical infrastructure that this country needs. In particular I am thinking about rail. Work on roads, by and large, is done. This is my main question.