Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

----analyse whether and when X, Y or Z will be delivered. The civil servants who are in charge of prioritising and not prioritising projects within the plan should appear before each committee to justify that selection. I do not know whether we can do that in the course of this Dáil. Perhaps we cannot, in which case it should be the first item on the agenda for the next bunch of committees. If there is to be a mid-term review of the plan's projects, we need to review the manner in which we deliver the plan.

Last week, I noticed that Apple's welcome decision to locate in Athenry had become subject to a planning appeal. That is normal and is people's right, but it will take An Bord Pleanála at least six months to decide on the matter. The board's track record on smaller projects has seen the process extend to nine or 12 months. We will delay a project that was hard fought for by the good people in IDA Ireland, was located in the regions to everyone's surprise and was badly needed. It will go into the quagmire of our planning system. Have we not learned lessons from previous plans? Surely there should be an overall infrastructural body to take charge of and deliver these plans. Instead of delay upon delay, we would then get a plan that had dates and delivery targets for specific projects.

This plan contains many projects that were not delivered in the Government's previous plan for various reasons - for example, budgets, or, more importantly, a lack of progress. Were the Minister a finalist in tonight's "The Great British Bake Off," he would be criticised for reheating what was previously baked and lose marks. There are an awful lot of soggy bottoms in this plan. Many of them are due to problems with the Government and its lack of ambition, but others are due to system problems that, if not acted upon, will plague this plan and haunt its delivery in the same way they did with other plans.

The plan's employment statistics are ambitious. Everyone wants people to work, and I note the plan seeks to create 45,000 construction jobs. That is fantastic, but does the apprenticeship system have the capacity to back that up? Were the Minister to allocate money to SOLAS next week to put in place an apprenticeship programme, how would it be able to get up to that capacity quickly to avoid a situation similar to that which pertained in 2001 and 2002, when the construction rates and the tender amount one was obliged to pay to get construction done ate into the value of the projects? Unless the capacity is available to deliver an apprenticeship programme that is real and relevant to 2015, as opposed to the early 1980s, this plan will not deliver, and it certainly will not deliver 45,000 construction jobs. There is a cadre of people who have skills that need updating, and they should be targeted through employment programmes. They should be given access to these jobs, and the people who wish to learn those skills from school or otherwise should now be given a chance. If this involves the Minister front-loading investment in SOLAS and the institutes of technology to make those programmes available and to produce those skilled people, that should be done, because the labour force then will be available to deliver the plan.

I will go through some of the projects. At present, 42% of Ireland's GDP is generated around the environs of this building, in places like Dublin 2 and Dublin 6, and not even in all of Dublin. When one leaves Dublin's city centre, one encounters serious economic black spots that are not witnessing a recovery, and when one leaves Dublin altogether one encounters serious problems. One measure of this plan will be its ability to restore that balance and its ability to give the regions a proper say and a proper role in the country's recovery, as well as a proper chance to exploit its opportunities. However, the plan as laid out does not do this. A plan that leaves out a link road between two key cities, Cork and Limerick, does not say anything about regional development. A plan that cuts the budget for the regional broadband scheme that was announced only a few weeks previously does not do much for a regional broadband economy. As for the road network plan, ironically, my constituency colleague, the Taoiseach, as well as our senior constituency colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, are running to claim credit for the N5, yet the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, has stated that he has no direct involvement in the choosing of the roads. Perhaps the Government needs to get its story right. However, when one considers that €4.4 billion of €6 billion over the next few years has been allocated to maintenance-----

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