Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We all agree regional planning is of the utmost importance. It has become more and more important as time goes by. It is true the country has developed in a haphazard way with Dublin spreading out gradually into the country so much that perhaps in 100 years' time it will have spread to the rest of the country. We have to counter that. I agree entirely with the people who have already said that. We can do it in a positive or negative way. There are some people who say our population is getting too big and that it will increase by a certain amount. That is to our advantage. It is beneficial because the more people we have in the country the more economies of scale we can avail of. Incidentally, in case we need to be reminded, countries such as Belgium and Holland, which are roughly one quarter or one third our size have three and five times the population, which says something about how one can deal with these things. We have a number of sacred cows we have to confront. One of the things we have to do is seriously consider investment outside of the greater Dublin area and in close proximity to some of the larger cities, in the midlands and along the western seaboard, right from north to south. If that is done over a period of time it will eventually level off the kind of development we have seen taking place already. It will create an economic pull on the other side of the country and we will see an equalisation of development in a way that is beneficial to the people who are living there now and future generations.

Much has been said about rural life. I have said it many times in the past. Our planning policy has to look carefully at development in rural Ireland. Looking at schools is the classic way of finding out where we are going. Are the schools having difficulty staying open? Why are they not staying open? It is because the population is not sufficient to require it. Why is there not sufficient population to require it? It is because the local authorities do not want to give planning permission in rural Ireland. There is no reason in the wide earthly world why we cannot have development of the indigenous rural populations in line with good planning, unlike in the UK where such populations have completely shrunk and moved away. In the UK, the only people in rural areas, apart from those who live in very big houses, are those in holiday homes. Such a situation is developing in this country as well. We need to encourage indigenous populations to remain in their own areas in concert with good planning. That can be done. Professor Caulfield in Galway has been promoting the idea for years.

The dirt and air interpretation of good planning would say it is a great thing to see the side of a hill at night with no lights. The people who live in that part of the country know the opposite. They think it is a great thing to see the side of a hill at night with lights. In every other country in the world that is what one sees. For some unknown reason, our planners have pursued the opposite line, which means the population drifts away. We also need to remember that we have a tradition of mass emigration from counties in the midlands, along the western seaboard and the south. As a result of that there is a need to replenish the population and counter the drift away from those areas. We could throw up our hands and say we cannot do anything about this but we can. I will take Carrick-on-Shannon, where 20 years ago there was very little going on, as an example. I used to visit it occasionally on Sundays and there was very little happening in it. Two major employers then appeared on the scene, one in the wood fabrication area and the other in the banking area, and it made a huge difference. One cannot cross the street on a Sunday afternoon now because the traffic is so busy. There is business, population growth, economic activity, commercial activity and things are happening. That is what helps to promote and develop an area. It brings people into the area and it gives people employment and quality of life. That is just one example. There needs to be many more such examples along the western seaboard. I spent a bit of time down there during the summer and in Sligo, Fermanagh and Donegal. It is interesting to look at now and again. We all need to do it and we, as legislators, should do it.

The other thing that has become obvious is the question about infrastructure. We have choices. We can have free water. It is a great ideological idea but if we do that, we will miss out on some other investment in infrastructure. Water and wastewater services, roads, telecommunications, rail services, recreational facilities and health and education services are the bedrock of the areas of this country that need development. We must make decisions some time in the future. It is all very fine to seize political opportunities. They arise on a regular basis and we go down a particular road for parochial reasons. That is grand. It meets a purpose at the time but if we keep going on like that, in 25 years' time we will still be talking about the same things in this House and they will still need to be done.

There were 9 million people in the country in the 1840s.

The population of the island is at its highest since then. There have been improvements and positive action has been taken, but more needs to be done. We need to encourage foreign direct investment and indigenous investment in growth centres along the western seaboard and the midlands. We need to develop the facilities that are available to develop, as has been done in other parts of Europe and elsewhere.

We need to be watchful about some of the thinking in Europe regarding what is known now as the Apple tax. Some countries see a great opportunity of curtailing Ireland's economic activity, but for what reason? Of course, there is a simple reason. They want more foreign direct investment in their own bailiwick - in their own backyard. We are in competition with all of those countries. It is sad that many people in this country see the so-called Apple tax as a great opportunity for Ireland to get a windfall. There are no such windfalls around. The simple fact is that this is a great opportunity for other countries to encourage foreign direct investment into their particular jurisdictions without having to tax anything earned in those jurisdictions and to hand it over to us. I want to mention this in particular regarding regional development. If Ireland is forced into that situation, we have a serious problem on our hands. Some think that is a victory; it is not a victory. It is a serious issue that will have a huge impact and will curtail our activity, development, growth and advancement for the next 50 years. Suffice it to say that I do not think it would be a good idea.

One needs more time than I have to cover a subject of this nature. If we play our cards well and avail of the opportunities that are available and appear before us, we can take long-term planning decisions that are in the interests of the country at the time they are needed. We need to avoid quick-flip decisions to gain a short-term advantage and think about the expanding population. The expanding population should not be seen as a threat and rather should be seen as a great advantage. There is no reason the country could not facilitate 10 million people. We have developed this is crazy nonsense over the years. We draw upon ourselves the notion of being downtrodden and becoming more downtrodden on the basis that if we keep saying the same thing people will have pity for us. There is no such thing. We live in a competitive world and we should bear that in mind.

My last point relates to the things we do ourselves. While this issue does not affect my constituency, it affects the country. I know a decision is about to be made either today or within the next week or so on a foreign direct investment project in the Galway region. Various people objected to it, which is fair enough. They have a right to object, but it is not a requirement; it is not mandatory to object. People do not seem to understand the difference. It is not mandatory. If we have an opportunity to create jobs in any part of the country, we should have a system that deals with the objections raised much quicker than at present. We need to be able to illustrate to those considering investment in jobs in the various regions that we can have a decision fairly quickly - at least comparable to the speed of those decisions taken in other jurisdictions that are competing with us. That is the amazing part of it; they are competing with us. We would then be able to say that we are working on an even keel and a level playing pitch and be able to compete with anybody.

I hope the Minister will try to put the positives together and avoid the negatives. We need to try to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes we made in the past and that we do not get involved in a welter of negativity and olagón that used to prevail in this country once upon a time. We have proved during the Celtic tiger that we could do things that were not possible previously. We may have done things wrong and may have done some daft things, but at least we proved we could do them right if we wanted to. Let us continue to do that.

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