Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

Transforming Ireland — A Better Quality of Life for All is ironic when one considers that for many people, their quality of life has not improved significantly during the Government's time in office. That is why the new national development plan and all its promises must be approached with extreme scepticism. People's quality of life has not improved precisely because of a failure to manage economic growth and to plan for, and meet, the needs of a changing State.

There has been a failure to make the necessary interventions to prevent urban sprawl and to ensure employment is created outside the greater Dublin area. Delivery of infrastructure has been delayed by the insistence on using public private partnerships. The sell off of State assets has continued apace regardless of the future implications for the State's strategic interest. While the population has expanded rapidly, public services, such as health, education and public transport, have not been expanded to meet our population's needs. Commitments in respect of public transport are among those not met in the last plan.

Policies pursued by the Government have contributed to a situation where, in most families, both parents must work to pay enormous mortgages. We have failed to develop child care infrastructure and a system of pre-school education which these new parents need.

While action to tackle climate change has begun to be taken elsewhere across the globe, this Government has again done almost nothing. Urban sprawl has accelerated and we have become a society ever more dependent on cars. Traffic congestion is choking this city and the recent upsurge in emissions output has been linked to the transport sector.

Employment remains concentrated in the Dublin region and we are precariously over dependent on foreign multinationals. Our competitiveness is being undermined by the failure to roll out key communications infrastructure, namely, broadband, as a consequence of the privatisation of Eircom. Our manufacturing base continues to decline with the food sector coming under increasing pressure from foreign multiples.

Privatisation is also a part of this plan. It is proposed that public private partnerships comprise 39% of spending on public transport. Such partnerships make no economic sense if a structure delivered in this way costs more and takes longer to deliver because of the complex procurement procedures.

As we look at this plan, we cannot be expected to forget that many of the targets in the previous NDP were not achieved on time or on budget, that many programmes remain unfinished and that it failed, in particular, in respect of the objective to achieve balanced regional development and tackling inequality. The latest UNICEF figures, which rank Ireland 19th out of 21 industrialised countries in respect of the proportion of children who experience poverty and hardship, confirm the findings of other reports. The gap is widening between rich and poor and Ireland is one of the most unequal societies in the world.

Other speakers spoke about the all-Ireland dimension to the plan. Sinn Féin lobbied for an increased focus on cross-Border development. We look forward to the implementation of commitments such as re-opening the Ulster Canal and the construction of the bridge at Narrow Water for which Sinn Féin has actively campaigned. While the plan is not a genuinely national, fully integrated all-Ireland development plan, which we would like, this must be a goal for any future plan.

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