Mr. Mike Devane:

There are basic issues with the EY report around accuracy. Having been involved at the front end of the report where we set the terms of reference, some of them were not adequately met in our opinion, particularly around what the future opportunity was. That is the more significant issue. That gets me into the Deputy's comment on the importance of the Atlantic economic corridor, AEC. The first Deputy made the point about how the communities along the axis will respond to building up more density. Very clearly with the AEC we have already gone after that, we have looked at all of the chambers along that axis running from Kerry to Derry, getting them to support what we are doing. The issue becomes one of defining what exactly we are talking about. If we do an all-island rail review, the critical issue is what economic guidance is going to be given to the people doing the review. We have concerns today that freight business in the north west needs to have access to the Foynes port to be successful and vice versa. If we look at the medium and longer term, a critical economic issue needs to be addressed in respect of all the regions that run from Donegal down to Kerry.

In those counties the gross value add per person, which is the real economic measurement to look at, is about half of the average. The greater Dublin area is at approximately double the average generally speaking. When we talk about an economic corridor running from Derry to Kerry, we are talking about a practical application of the assets we have in a continuous form to give us a city of scale so that we can attract the kind of inward investment we need to build that. We know from the study Dr. Bradley did in Mayo - Mayo is like all the other counties - that five large companies contribute the majority of the GDP of that county. If any one of those were to go, the GDP would be likely to drop by a significant amount. This is important because Dr. Bradley's report also shows there are very high dependencies in Mayo and in the other counties. By dependency I mean there is a demographic issue with many younger people and older people. We do not have the people in the centre aged between 25 and 50 and that demographic is hollowed out. We know this because we have seen migration out of the regions for a long time; that is the old story.

We are talking about correcting this gross value add. We are talking about building up. When we are talking about regional balance, we are talking about getting the net contribution to GDP per region or per county to be at least equal to the cost of that county in terms of what is dependent. In this case, dependent includes people working in the public sector, people working in farming who are subvented, pensioners who are paid etc. The idea of balance here is to increase gross value add so that it can pay for its county and every county can wash its face basically.

The idea of the corridor is to use the assets available in a very practical way and create one backbone that runs from north to south. When that backbone is built, we can at least attract the kind of investment about which we are talking. We need to bear in mind that two large investments were considered for Galway, one employing hundreds and the other employing thousands. We were not able to lock in either of those for many reasons. A major reason was people's mobility and the ability to move people quickly from place to place. That is the idea of the corridor.

I would make another point about greenways.