Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As a socialist, I support the idea of a national development plan. I am a strong advocate of the idea of democratically and rationally decided plans in which we decide where to build, what to build, how to build and what to produce so the needs of our citizens are met. This is the definition of a plan for development for the country. I was delighted to read that Project Ireland 2040 emphasises social outcomes and values ahead of economic targets. On one level, the very fact the Government has produced a 22 year plan is a tacit acknowledgement that the free market and allowing the private sector to rule and decide everything does not produce wholesome outcomes. It is an acknowledgement that the State has a role in planning and that is good. It acknowledges what is good and what is needed in our country and that everything cannot be left to the whims of the market and the corporations in the pursuit of profits. Except, of course, this is not a 22 year plan and it is not anything remotely new or visionary. It is a repackaged bundle of previously announced capital programmes wrapped in a reheated aspirational framework. It is akin to a scene from "Groundhog Day" that we seem destined to repeat in this country again and again under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

I want to plagiarise Gene Kerrigan's article from the weekend in the Sunday Independent. He stated Project Ireland 2040:

is a 20-year strategy designed to enable every place in the country to reach its potential, no matter what its size or location. It recognises that the various regions of the country have different roles... It is about making regions competitive according to their strengths and not against one another; about ensuring a high quality urban environment, as well as vibrant rural areas.

Except, as Gene Kerrigan points out, this is not a quote from Project Ireland 2040, but from the now forgotten - except this discussion keeps raising it - national spatial strategy of 2002 under Fianna Fáil, the huge success of which can still be seen on our streets, in our congested towns and cities, in our ghost estates, in the schemes built on floodplains, in pyrite-riddled houses and in once-off housing well away from any services such as schools or public transport.

Project Ireland 2040 follows in a long tradition of failed and non-existent plans, where aspirations are sacrificed at the first resistance from the market or in the interests of the financial elites. Will Project Ireland 2040 be different? It is different mostly by its scale and by the scale of public money used to announce and publicise it. We cannot go to the cinema or switch on the television or radio without seeing what is, in effect, a general election broadcast for Fine Gael, promising to cure all of our ills by 2040. We will have three new hospitals, urban and rural regeneration worth €3 billion, new motorways, new metros and tramlines all by 2040.

We cannot deal with the trolley crisis we have now, which has worsened and developed over the seven years Fine Gael has been in government. We cannot deal with a housing crisis that sees tens of thousands of children and adults homeless and 100,000 in housing need. We cannot bring funding for our public transport services back to the levels they were at before the crisis. We cannot even build a proper city in Dublin because everything we do means it gets more and more congested. However, according to the plan, we will build a shiny city overlooking the Atlantic, which will be the envy of the best northern European cities with great transport, great schools, great health services and a natural environment to be wondered at. This will not happen. It is a fraud and a fantasy and, to quote the song written by the famous migrant worker in America who organised migrant workers to seek their rights, Joe Hill, we will get pie in the sky.

From the day of your birth

It's bread and water here on earth...

But there'll be pie in the sky

By and by when I die

This is exactly what we are getting with the plan.

The greatest con of the plan is also its most ironic. Coming just months after the collapse of Carillion in Britain, this plan is essentially a proposal not just for public private partnerships but a version of public private partnerships on steroids. In 2015, the Government enacted a measure to ensure no Department spent more than 10% of its budget on public private partnership. While making a huge chunk of public infrastructure and services reliant on private finance at least there was some limit to this type of disaster and some limit to the type of Carillion we might see. This will be gone with the plan. The plan will mean a feeding frenzy for public private partnerships and private financial speculation. It will hold key public assets and goods to ransom. Assets and goods we need for our citizens will effectively be in the hands of private companies and financial interests. We know from experience here and internationally this costs the State multiples more than if it were to borrow to build the projects and fund them directly itself. One report suggests the capital costs of a typical public private partnership or private finance initiative costs 8%, double of the long-term Government borrowing rate of 4% and that the outcome in terms of quality, design and accountability of projects built by the State is much better than it is in a public private partnership or private finance initiative.

Far from the rhetoric of public private partnerships transferring the financial risk from the State to the private sector, the reality is the State takes all of the risks and pays more for private finance. A 2013 study found there is no strong evidence to suggest public private partnerships have delivered better value for taxpayer's money. There is evidence to the contrary, and yet effectively this entire plan is based on the Godzilla of all public private partnerships. We will have more M50 toll disasters, more collapsed projects such as the regeneration of O'Devaney Gardens and St. Michael's estate and more desperately needed homes and schools hanging in the balance dependent on the machinations of private companies such as Carillion, except the scale will be bigger than ever before. In the years ahead, our national development will be dictated more and more by the needs and profit opportunities of bankers and developers. The plan and its various projects will not be decided by the regional planning forums and least of all by the needs of the people. It will be decided on the needs of bankers and developers.

The public homes that our citizens need will be built when the finance the private sector wants to use is found. This will be dictated not by the needs of the people who live in this country, or by what is good, rational and environmentally sound, but by the profit margin these companies need and the profits they want. We are told a new national regeneration development agency has been set up to manage public sites and will be given compulsory purchase powers if private sites are needed for housing. However, these powers already exist and there are legislative means to use a compulsory purchase order to obtain land. What we do not have is the political will to do so. We do not have a Government that is willing to declare housing a national emergency and to build the homes needed. I find it unlikely that a new agency will find the political will to take the measures needed, and our fear is this agency will do whatever the market, in the shape of developers and bankers, dictates and not what is contained in the plan. Therefore, we repeat that we call it fraud and a fantasy. The best of luck with it, but it is completely dependent on the whims of the market, financiers, developers and bankers and this is a flaw. This is not planning, it is fantasy.

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