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

It is out for public consultation. Letterkenny, which is twinned with Derry, is indeed north of the Galway-Dublin line, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will know. We want to avoid a repeat of the pointless, disastrous, unnecessary and useless national spatial strategy we had with Fianna Fáil in office. It started off quite well, with a number of growth centres and cities, but turned out to include 20 or 30 across the country and became a joke. That is not spatial planning at all.

It is not a realistic objective to turn every town in Ireland into a city, it is neither realistic nor good planning and we will not produce such a plan.

It is encouraging that unemployment has fallen in every county in Ireland. The number of jobs in every county has increased, but it is uneven and it is not merely a case of greater Dublin versus the rest of the country. It is much more uneven than people might think, for instance, there has been a large increase in employment in County Monaghan but not as much in County Sligo, as the Deputy is aware. The game-changer for Sligo will not be a planning framework but investment in very necessary infrastructure, particularly the N4 to connect that growing town to the motorway and road network, and also broadband. I anticipate these are the kinds of things that will be in the ten year capital plan.

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