James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

The national development plan is very much focused on infrastructure and the understanding we are very challenged where it is concerned, especially water infrastructure, our electricity grid and also roads, for example. On rural areas, I come from a provincial town in a rural constituency and am very conscious that in those towns you are never going to get the big developers, so what we have to do and what I am doing is seeing how we can activate medium and smaller builders. Also for those in rural areas, being able to have developer-led wastewater treatment plants that would be certified, regulated and then handed over to Uisce Éireann, for example, would help deliver housing in more rural areas where we are never going to be able to get the bigger developers to settle down. It helps with trying to get houses into those rural villages but also into provincial towns that have not been getting those supports either. I always give the example of Donegal, which was low in the recent league table when it came to meeting its targets. In fairness, and I defended Donegal on this, it is actually quite good on own-build, but it has a challenge with not really having any affordable housing body active up there and not much private activity either, which would allow it to use Part 8. Donegal has been struggling in that sense, and also with the huge workload from defective concrete blocks as well. I am very conscious of rural areas. As I said, I come from a rural village and I live in a provincial town.