Ms Patricia King:

If I might, I will deal with the framework and I will ask Dr. McDonnell to deal with the capital plan.

The Government invited congress to participate in one meeting so far on the development of the framework document on what Ireland will look like in 2040. From our perspective, we argue that there should be a holistic approach to planning the development of towns, etc. Clearly, there are severe problems for workers, even in commuting, how they get to work and where work is located. That has significant social impact and even physical and mental impact in terms of workers commuting for hours to a workplace and then having to do the same to get home. There are also all the issues and fallout from that. Any of the discussions I have taken part in - as I stated, we have had one meeting so far - have been about building holistic communities with health services, hospital services, education services and communities rather than having only low paying jobs available in a particular community and people having to travel further, for instance, to the city, if they want to earn better money.

When we are building communities, suburbs or whatever of Waterford, Galway and Limerick, which cities were mentioned as ones that could be expanded, we must have quality housing and we must make plans for that housing to be available for all who need it. In fairness, a number of sectoral groups, such as Engineers Ireland and Architects Ireland, have quite progressive comments to make about how one does that. We are not experts in how towns are built, but what people want is to be able to live within a reasonable distance of their workplace, have relatively easy access to schools, health services, and so forth, and to develop a good community around them. Getting up at 5 a.m. to be at a desk for 9 a.m. and leaving work at 4.30 p.m. to get on a train and not getting home until the children are in bed asleep has been the pattern that has developed over the past 20 years. As one who has been for years a victim of the N11, I would say I know every leaf on every tree on the way in because that is what one does as one sits for hours in traffic.

We would argue strongly that agencies such as IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have a big role to play in that conversation. We argue that because their job is to attract industry to Ireland. We believe they should do that on the basis of decently paid jobs located in line with that framework. This should all be joined-up thinking. As I said, the conversation is at an early stage. We will argue that we deal with ordinary people who want to lead a good quality of life in a community which has an emphasis not only on work but also on leisure and in which the amenities are available to everybody. We will argue that we do not make the mistakes we made previously where we built low quality housing for people because we think they are working class. I grew up with those mistakes. I saw that all around me. We should have a much more innovative, equal way of dealing with society in order that people can at least aspire to enjoy a decent living in the community or town in which they live.