Dáil debates

Wednesday, 31 January 2018

12:30 pm

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

The ten-year national infrastructure investment plan will be published as soon as it is agreed by the Government. I hope that will be in the next few weeks. The Deputy will then see what can be funded and what cannot be funded in the greater Dublin area and in the rest of the country in the decade ahead. All the projects she mentioned are in the mix.

Deputy Catherine Murphy is correct to say that we need to spend now to save later but to spend now one needs the money and let us not forget that until last year we were running a budget deficit. We were spending more than we were taking in in taxes and other revenues and we were increasing our borrowing every year. In order to spend and invest one has to have the money so the first thing we had to do was to get the economy back on track and on a sustainable footing and now we are in a position in the years ahead, provided we continue to steward the economy well, to invest in infrastructure in a way that we have not done for a very long time.

To pick up on another point the Deputy made on areas on the outskirts of cities that are zoned for development, she is correct that we need to ensure that transport is in place for those areas but perhaps what is more important is that we need to make sure that we put new housing in places that are already served by infrastructure and that means densification, going higher and having higher density, in particular in city cores not just in Dublin but in Limerick, Waterford, Cork, Galway and other places too. If people live near to where they work, in particular if they live within walking distance of where they work, that cuts out the need for all that expensive infrastructure and there are no emissions at all.

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