Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

II will pick up on a point Senator Casey made about the implementation of county development plans. That implementation cannot be divorced from other policies set out elsewhere, for example, strategic housing developments completely bypassing county development plans where things such as the need for schools and other infrastructure, which are about building communities, are measured. We then have deficits. For example, looking at a region, in 1996 Dublin city accounted for 13% of the national population. It now has a bigger population but accounts for 11%. If we start looking at the outer counties, they have grown from 9% to 13%. In fact the three outer counties of Kildare, Meath and Wicklow exceed the population of Dublin city now. What we have not done is get that land use and transportation planning piece done correctly and there is extra pressure and the spending is being doubled.

The recent review of the baselines of the local property tax has been infuriating for areas that have been growing in population because the way it was redone almost made no difference if the population had grown. The benefit was given to areas in terms of the geographic size of the county as opposed to its population. It puts counties that are growing rapidly at a gigantic disadvantage. It will spread things to breaking point and in some places they are at breaking point at this stage in terms of the level of discretionary spending.