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

The feed-in tariffs allowed people to bring energy into the system in the North of Ireland, but the Minister of State is right in that there has been corruption in the North with regard to the renewable heating scheme, which is why we have taken that issue so seriously.

The spatial imbalance has been added to by the Government's onslaught on services in regional and rural parts of Ireland, with 500 post offices now being described as economically unsustainable and with the closure of 139 Garda stations. I met the regulator of the credit unions, which are being prevented from functioning as a growing banking system in this economy. The Government is involved in a whole range of brakes on the development of rural parts of Ireland. For instance, in parts of the country broadband speeds are 36 times slower than those in parts of Dublin. If anyone is looking to do any business these days, they need broadband. However, we will not have broadband in many of these places until 2022 or 2023. The Government needs to get interim solutions to those broadband crises as well.

One of my major problems with the Government's focus on regional and rural development is the ignoring of the Six Counties. The Border runs for 499 km in mostly rural parts of Ireland but there is little mention of the North of Ireland in the strategic plans of this Government. The same applies with regard to the South of Ireland in the North's plans. In that area, the development of 11 counties is enmeshed. They are interdependent and that needs to be focused on.

IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have a really poor record in the development of jobs outside of Dublin. Since Fine Gael came into office, at least 70% of IDA Ireland investment has gone to the Dublin or Cork areas. Those statistics belie any shaking of heads. More is going in now due to the super-inflation that exists in Dublin with regard to office space and accommodation space. It is more out of default that this is happening. This critique is not to say that Dublin does not need development. Of course it needs development, but the Government's rudderless spatial plan so far has led to overheating in areas of Dublin.

Two important things need to happen. Representatives of the NTA attended my committee recently and I asked them the basis on which they invested in transport services. They said that they invest on the basis of demand, which sounds logical. Demand needs to be met. However, we are not going to change the spatial imbalance in the country by focusing on demand only. If we want to disrupt the trends, when investing we must have regard to future demands and not just existing demand. In other words, if we want to build a critical mass that will create balance and draw from Dublin, we need to invest more per capitain certain locations in the State but that has not happened.

County Meath is a great county but it has suffered significantly due to the lack of spatial planning over the past 20 years. It has basically become a dormitory county with a population that is increasing rapidly.

The number of people living in the county will increase from 200,000 to approximately 250,000 within 20 years. This increase is creating severe pressure on housing. There are approximately 4,000 people on the housing waiting list in County Meath, yet there are approximately 5,000 empty houses in the county. Despite rents increasing at one of the fastest rates in the country, rent caps have not been applied to any part of my constituency of Meath West.

County Meath has a disproportionately young population, with an average age lower than the national average. Funding for youth services is poor, however, with the county receiving only €2.89 per child from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, as opposed to an average national payment of €22.31 per child. Meath County Council has the lowest income, expenditure and number of staff per capita of all local authorities. Until the Government commits to providing the county council with the resources required to bring its funding up to the national average, the county will continue to have major problems.

To give another example of the role of Departments run by Fine Gael Ministers, the average payment nationally from private housing grants is €8 per capita, whereas the corresponding figure in County Meath is €3 per capitaand the highest average payment in the country is €17 per capita. County Meath has the lowest number of gardaí per capitain the State, which is one of the reasons we have a spate of crime in the county and its major towns have daytime drug dealing and drug use in their centres. Approximately 40% of the population of the county shop elsewhere. This is one of the highest figures for retail leakage in the country. County Meath is also a net contributor to the State, providing 3.4% of taxes and receiving only 2.7% of expenditure. It is also the most heavily tolled county in the State.

One of the reasons for all of this is that County Meath, like County Kildare, has a burgeoning population and Government spending is not keeping pace with population growth. While Kildare, Louth and Wicklow are comparable counties, they attract much more investment through IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland than County Meath. As a result, economic stability in the county has declined significantly in recent years and it has fallen down the affluence table.

People in County Meath, with its large population, commute further than people in any other county owing to a lack of jobs and transport infrastructure locally. This morning, the majority of people in the county who went to work left the county. In no other local authority area in the State do most workers leave the county to work.

The Government must, in its spatial strategy, not only balance east and west and disrupt current trends, but also ensure counties such as Meath are not left behind in terms of investment. The Government's plans do not envisage a rail line to Navan, the largest town in the country without a rail service. Navan is also in the county with the largest number of commuters who also commute further than people in all other counties. People travelling into Dublin meet traffic jams on the Meath side of the Dublin-Meath border and as far west as four, five or six miles outside Blanchardstown. This is because Fine Gael made a decision to reduce capital expenditure. Ireland is second from the bottom of the European Union league table for capital expenditure, spending more than only Romania.

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