Dr. Alan Barrett:

The Department presents data on a regional spread of projects on an ongoing basis. This is helpful, but there are a number of limitations. It gives some indication of, say, projects that are worth over €10 million but it does not give a detailed quantification of the amount of money being spent. It may be in there somewhere but it is not fed through in the live data. In writing our report, we looked at that spread of projects and asked whether what is being done is achieving some sort of redistribution of the population. As members will know, county-level populations are only updated when the census happens. As a result, you are looking at data from census to census. It is very difficult, therefore, to get a sense of linking investments to population changes because the data just does not support that.

Underlying the Deputy's question is an important fundamental point, namely, the extent to which this sort of investment should cater for or determine population growth. That is a really important distinction. There is a need for an in-depth discussion about whether you need to proactively invest almost ahead of population growth in order that you are putting in place what is required. As the Deputy will know, policy in Ireland has typically been more in the camp of facilitating the population rather than proactively getting ahead of it.

Where we are after that, I do not know. There is a level of discussion on balanced regional development in these documents which exceeds what previously would have been the case. There is a recognition that the growth and sprawl of Dublin has not been good for Dublin and has not been good for the rest of the country. My colleagues can interrupt at any point, but I am of the view that we are still grappling with this issue. There is a recognition of the need to rebalance development but does that mean we should focus, for example, on Cork and Limerick or should we do a broader spread. I have seen people make different contributions on that question, but I do not think that I have ever seen Governments being willing to nail their colours to the mast. The latter is probably for very understandable political reasons. Perhaps some of my colleagues may wish to comment.