Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Burton. Like Deputy Hogan I was surprised to see this item on the Order Paper because there are many pressing matters in the legislative sphere for the House to give its attention to. The question was answered when the Minister gave his speech. As somebody who is an admirer of the Minister' s ability I was disappointed with the speech. His use of stark statistical analysis of where this country and society are going and his litany of self-congratulatory facts did him no justice.

We all share in the success story that is Ireland which Members on all sides of the House had a hand in creating. We do not all claim credit for it at every opportunity. More important for people listening to this debate and for policymakers is how we address the extraordinary challenges and opportunities of the demographic projections presented in this analysis.

There are some starkly worrying issues. The population of greater Dublin will continue to dominate. Mr. Frank McDonald, who has been a commentator on these matters for a long time, summarises that we are creating a city state. Greater Dublin is projected to have more than 40% of the population in 2021 and will so dominate Ireland in terms of infrastructure and economic activity that it will not be healthy for the organisation of a balanced country.

There have been debates in this House and the Government has made detailed statements on its spatial strategy. What does it mean? We learn new words like gateways and hubs but that is all we know about them. It reminds me of the RAPID programme, where the Government, to pretend it was doing something about inequality, re-labelled normal Government expenditure as socially focused expenditure. What specifically is being done about spatial planning in this country? Where are the driven Government strategies to develop regional centres and to ensure that the infrastructure and jobs go to those regional centres?

In reality the development of Ireland, of which the Minister is so proud, is not being planned in a rational way by Government or by these Houses. It is developer-led. Developers determine where population is to grow by planning and building houses. The whole planning process is overwhelmed by it. In my county the best efforts of forward planning are undermined by the requirement to deal with current applications that are being made in large volumes as developers seek to make profits. If we do not exert control over the strategy, we will pay dearly for it in decades to come.

The statistics for migration patterns are stark in the volumes they predict. There will be at least 30,000 new migrants per year for the next 19 or 20 years, and that is a conservative estimate. We seem to have no strategy for dealing with an evolving society. My colleague Deputy Burton has an even more direct experience of this. Society in towns, villages, urban areas and constituencies as a whole is changing, but in an almost haphazard way.

The economy needs workers so we invite them in, particularly from new EU member states, but there is no structure for integration. People are struggling to come to terms with the changing pattern of worker in our society. We do not have an overall plan for integration to ensure we are bedding down a balanced society that will create, as I mentioned last week, a new and different Irish community instead of ghettoising people because they have an economic short-term value and then rejecting them. I do not see any sense to this, and I had hoped the Minister would give some visionary comments to the House today in his contribution on these important matters.

An overwhelming issue is the need for joined up Government. I do not see sense in attempts at this either. The Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business had a stark presentation from Mr. Eddie Shaw of the National Safety Council this morning. If the Minister reads his contribution, he will find robust criticism regarding a lack of joined up Government thinking on road safety. It applies to all issues that are to be dealt with in dealing with a demographic shift that is unprecedented in a century. The National Roads Authority is building roads but it is doing so in a slow and piecemeal fashion, leaving gaps within all our national systems. Where other countries might see the need for a metro in a city such as Dublin and proceed in a structured fashion, we seem to be paralysed by analysis and unable to put basic facilities in place.

In my county of Wexford, there has been a 12.5% increase in population since the last census, from 1996 to 2002. The increase is geographically narrowly focused in north Wexford and the strip of county on the coast. There is no other planning however. There are two secondary schools in north Wexford, one of which by volume is by far the biggest secondary school in Ireland. That school cannot take any more pupils. The county is trying to catch up, stating the need for a new secondary school in Gorey and the development of Kilmuckridge. However, this is occurring years after the population is in place. People are struggling and there are crazy transport routes ferrying people from north Wexford to Wexford town to receive education. This is because education needs are not being linked with the requirements of the changing population distribution in the country.

The same can be said about leisure facilities. Houses are built because developers submit planning applications, but the infrastructure is not being put in place to create societies beyond that. A wilderness is often being created instead in the name of profit, which has significant social implications for the future.

The Labour Party is this week publishing a comprehensive document on child care, which I will not discuss in any detail as that will be raised by our spokesman. A number of people, both men and women, are telling us that they are fed up with some aspects of the Celtic tiger, such as endless working hours in the name of productivity. They are fed up with getting up at 6 a.m. and not getting home until late. They are worried about their family life or the lack of contact with their children. These are issues of values that must be discussed in tandem with the Minister's litany of economic progress. We are not an economy but a society. If we think of ourselves exclusively as an economy and think of people as units of work rather than citizens in an evolving society, we will make the wrong decisions. We may make no decisions at all.

Where are the grand ideas to restructure Ireland? The only new town we built is Ennis, and we did not put in place the resources to meet all the needs of that town when we started. Where are the new cities and towns? Where are the new modes of transport which are required, and where are the new innovative educational facilities that will ensure we do not create the city state that Frank McDonald is mindful of? Have we the strategies to explore the notion of manufacturing jobs being the hub of economic success? Where are the strategies to deal with the loss of manufacturing jobs currently taking place? Where are the plans to ensure all areas of the country benefit equally from the economic progress that has characterised Ireland for the past decade?

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