Dr. Ray Griffin:

It is a serious deficit in our politics. It involves a much stronger reach than that to which this Bill aspires. This Bill is very modest, simple and robust in its ambitions. As was said, we could have a much more aggressive version of this, but, as a PMB, in framing it, the ambition was to make it so minimalist that it could not but be accepted. It would be very hard to disagree with the principles of this Bill or how it is framed. It would give parliamentary oversight a very serious kick. For example, I have done significant analysis on the capital trackers. The first generation of it showed that 64% of capital spending of major projects, over €20 million, goes into Dublin, which is 29% of the country. The second generation moderated that to 56%. I go back to Edgar Morgenroth's work 20 years ago, when he was in the ESRI, and the work in framing the national spatial strategy, which is that double the growth needs to happen in the regions. Clearly, we are some way through the Project Ireland 2040 programme and still Dublin is overclocking in terms of investment at a 2:1 ratio, with some regions entirely closed out of major capital expenditure.