Dr. Tom McDonnell:

The NERI will make a submission to the planning framework review. In March, two of my colleagues are releasing a paper looking at solutions to the housing crisis - funding models, special purpose vehicles, etc.

Looking ahead to 2040, we will have limited resources. The process begins by looking at what we think will happen to the populations in the various areas and, looking at it from an economic point of view, identifying a small number of regional hubs to act essentially as champion urban areas - Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway and probably two others - where a disproportionate amount of the resources should go with the goal of encouraging and coaxing people to move to these urban areas. The process begins by completing the network that links Dublin to all the regional areas, including the north west which is currently isolated and is likely to become even more isolated after 2019. Alongside that, the process begins by linking the regions to each other. Waterford through to Cork, Limerick, Galway and up to Sligo and Letterkenny should be completed as a motorway network. Then everyone, with the exception of a few people in Mayo and Kerry, are within a certain geographic distance of that major western road artery. That becomes an extremely important piece. I alluded to rural broadband earlier. That makes it possible to have thriving small businesses in rural areas that are not reliant upon having either infrastructure or those resources there. There are things that can be done to maintain-----