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

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise this particularly important issue for north County Kildare, particularly for the people of Naas and the surrounding area.

The question of the stalled development of the town centre of Naas has been a moot issue for several years. It is ten years since the development stopped. Various procedures have been gone through in the meantime. I have raised the matter in this House, with the permission of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, on a number of occasions. I raised it in parliamentary questions and with Ministers. I have also raised the issue with the local authority. The position remains that the development, although in its final stages of inertia, is about to move on to the next stage, with a little bit of a push. I wish to raise that crucial strategic movement tonight.

If we count the amount of time and energy that has gone into evaluating the situation in Naas over the last number of years and put a cost on it it would be colossal. The symbolic vision of the stalled cranes on the horizon will have been there for ten years now and will remain there unless something very serious is done to move the process on. I know there is a process in place. On the last occasion the arbitration system had been referred and deferred; after sitting for a year it adjourned for a year, which is an extraordinary situation. At this stage I am asking the Minister of State if he can liaise with his colleague in the adjoining Department with a view to finding out exactly what is happening with the arbitration. Nothing positive can happen unless the arbitration is dealt with. There was only one arbitrator in the entire country. That was supplemented by four or five others, to the best of my knowledge, but we have heard nothing about that particular process since. To allow the prevailing situation to stand much longer will have a very serious impact on Naas because the town is now beginning to recover from the worst parts of the recession.

Now is the time to take the initiative and move it on. A good deal of work can be done in the interim before the final stages in respect of the development, which may be planning permission and many other issues, but if that work is not undertaken now it will have to be done at some stage in the future. For the life of me I cannot understand why it takes so long to do simple things. Everything seems to take forever in this country. We find that the simplest of issues that should have been dealt with in five or six weeks can take up to ten years. That does not give a good example to the rest of the country and it does not give a good impression of the country as to the way business is done here. I ask the Minister of State to take responsibility on this occasion and drive this forward in rapid fashion. If he cannot for some reason, I would like to know it.

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