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

The biggest problem affecting the country into the future is split between too many Departments. The Minister of State's Department covers regional development. The Minister of State has been long enough in this place to know that the decisions lie where the budgets exist. The budget for regional development is not within that Department.

As an example of what is happening to this city, traffic on the M50 is growing at ten times the European average. Commutes are slowing down or grinding to a halt if there is an accident on the motorway at the cost of local business. This makes us uncompetitive for foreign direct investment in the future. Meath is another example. It is a great county with really energetic people yet its role in this confused spatial development is that of a dormitory county. The population is increasing fast, to almost 200,000. More Meath workers leave the county every day to work than stay to work there. We have the longest commute in the State. Rush hour is at a crawl at the Meath-Dublin border which is miles away from Blanchardstown. Navan is the biggest town in the State without a rail line. This Government will likely build an extra lane on the M50 before it will build the 16 km of rail line necessary from Pace to Meath.

In 25 years’ time there will be 9 million living on the island of Ireland. This Government needs to think big, be creative and bold. It should consider some of the work that John Moran has done on this. We need to build a city that has the critical mass to break the gravity that Dublin exerts on growth in the State. We need to follow what the Danes did in Aarhus. Development should not be done with a scattergun effect as happened under the last spatial plan which tried to be everything to everybody. I appeal to the Government to get its act together, centralise resources and decision making and make sure when the population reaches 9 million, half of them are not living in Dublin.

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