Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in the past week, we heard that 500 post offices in this State are unsustainable. Teagasc has stated that only 37% of farms are economically viable. Growth per capitain the west is one quarter of what it is in Dublin. Broadband speeds in the regions that have broadband are 36 times slower than they are in Dublin. The north-west quarter of the country is without a rail line or a decent motorway. Where rail transport exists, it is far too slow. The western rail corridor, which should be very important to the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, remains unfinished.

It was recently announced that water would be pumped from the Parteen basin to Dublin. While I have not taken a decision yet on whether this is the right thing to do, my instinctive thought at the time was that instead of pumping all of this water from the Parteen basin to Dublin, why not put the jobs and the growth in Limerick, right beside the water? This is another example of infrastructure being built to service Dublin at a cost to the State.

The problem is that the Government has a scatter-gun approach to development. Thankfully, a limited amount of money is being spent in some areas but it is being spent without a plan. There is no spatial plan in existence in this State. The State has been developing in a haphazard, ad hocfashion for a long time. The national spatial plan has been defunct since 2002 and we are still awaiting the national planning framework. What it boils down to is Governments fire-fighting in respect of infrastructure in a rudderless fashion.

The Minister of State can see that this as well as I and I am sure his constituents can feel it. We are living in a lopsided economy. There is a damaging over-concentration of resources, economic activity and jobs in the Dublin area. One only need look at Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland as an example.

In recent years most of the jobs supported by Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Authority have landed in Dublin and Cork. In 2010, 37% of inward investment from the IDA was outside Cork and Dublin. In 2011 that figure was 27%: in 2012 it fell to 23%. The figures have recently improved slightly due to the lack of space in Dublin for new firms. Approximately 60% of inward investment is skewed towards Dublin. Not only is rural Ireland gutted by this rudderless Government but Dublin is overheating. The population of Dublin is approximately 40% that of the State. That is out of kilter with the European norm. Even in Britain, for example, where London is considered too big compared with the rest of the country only approximately 13% of the population lives there. The Government is on its way to drawing 50% of the population to the capital city. That is shockingly dangerous for those who live in and outside the city.

Even though that population lives in and around Dublin there are farms within the M50. Thornton Hall, which the Government owns, is under potatoes yet there are people commuting into Dublin from Cavan, Leitrim and Laois. Where is the sense in that? Schools in the west are shedding pupils. Consider the cost of the new schools the Government is building in the mid-east of the country while schools are withering and dying in the west. Where is the financial logic in that lack of development? That is why I am calling on the Government to focus on a plan of action. There is no plan. The Government is staggering along in a rudderless fashion and the cost is family life, investment and economic activity in the rest of the country.

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