Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Kenny for his remarks and it is right to thank all the people involved in this. I wish to particularly thank the small group of dedicated officials who worked long and hard on this. A section of the national development plan deals with resources and to square the circle on this we must invest additional resources. This was reflected in our statement last week. To get the Chancellor to provide the extra £1 billion on top of what he allocated last November, which was £50 billion over the period and to deal with the water rates issue will require us to make an allocation. This allocation will be specified into infrastructure and roads in the north west.

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