Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know much about Fianna Fáil spin doctors. I have not had the pleasure of working as closely with them as did the Deputy for five years so perhaps he can educate us. The proposal is that the national planning framework and the ten-year capital plan will be two parts of the same document - that there will be a new national development plan, the national planning framework will be one document and the ten-year capital plan will be the other and they will be published together because it is important that one adheres to the other. There is no point in producing a planning framework that says the country will look like this in 2040 and then producing a capital plan that does not align with that. There has already been public consultation. I understand that there is a procedure in the Dáil under which the national planning framework must be debated and adopted - that is in legislation so there will, of course, be a Dáil debate on it. However, I would not be at all hostile to having an open-ended debate about it in the coming weeks. I think that would be welcome and a good idea.

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