Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The establishment of the proposed technological university for the south east clearly will be important in supporting advanced education and the skills enterprise and industry need. A great deal of good work has been undertaken by the two institutes of technology and we are keen to move ahead with the planned amendments to the Technological Universities Bill 2015. They have given a momentum to the south east technological university project.

I take the Deputy's point that there needs to be a continued focus on regional development and we will publish two important national programmes towards the end of the year - the national planning framework and the national capital investment programme. It is important to align the two of those in order that the point the Deputy made about transport is addressed whereby there is alignment regarding the road infrastructure in the context of regional development as well. The reason we want to publish the two programmes together is to ensure co-ordination between the planning framework and capital investment. The two have to go hand in hand and that is a perfect example of how they need to go hand in hand.

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