Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am very much in favour of strategic planning and believe the capital plan should be integrated into a larger framework. I was very critical when that did not happen with the launch of the national spatial strategy. However, the way this plan has been developed will come back to haunt the Government. Early last year, the process was opened to submissions, but it was a one-way consultation. Until the plan was published, it was not obvious what, if anything, had been taken on board from those submissions. The plan should also have been launched in this Parliament. The Government is, after all, a minority one, but it has decided it has a monopoly on wisdom. That is outrageous.

It is essential that any national development framework is focused, evidence-based and takes account of the current environment, which, in this case, requires a transition between the national spatial strategy and the national development plan. It is not just that on day 1 we finish with the former and move on. The core strategy, we are told, is to develop a counterbalance to Dublin, by which is meant the greater Dublin area including counties Kildare, Meath, Wicklow and even further afield. We are to understand that the city cores of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, together with Athlone are to be the counterbalance to Dublin. In ten years' time will the number of locations chosen be a matter of regret given the risk that funds are being spread too thinly? What evidence was used to determine the number of priority locations?

The national planning framework will replace the national spatial strategy, which has informed development over the last 20 years. It is still informing development with sizable amounts of land being rezoned as we speak. Last May, I was told in a reply from the Minister of State, Deputy English, that the national planning framework would be the top level plan informing in turn the new regional and economic strategies. The regional strategies will replace the current regional planning guidelines. If those strategies are being developed, it would have been useful to have them included in a plan rather than to dictate from the top down. After all, if people are committed to something or an area is committed to something, there is a better chance of driving it. Responsibility needs to be taken in those particular areas. I was told in January 2017 in a reply from the then-Minister, Deputy Coveney, that his Department received a report in 2011 from the regional authorities which showed that prior to the introduction of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010, there were 41,788 ha of land in total zoned for housing sufficient for the provision of 1.1 million new homes or an additional population of 2.64 million. Some of that land was inappropriate locations and poorly serviced. The instruction was to scale back the amount of zoned land to 11,000 ha or land sufficient to provide 300,000 new dwellings. That would equate to approximately 12 years' supply. The same reply stated in respect of major metropolitan areas where housing demand is most acute that the existing round of regional planning guidelines continued to provide a reasonable basis for planning growth and housing provision.

I note my own experience in Kildare where the county development plan was adopted in 2017 to run to 2023. The plan provides for an increase of 33,500 new housing units by 2022. If one assumes 2.5 persons per household, it is a population increase of over 80,000. The same type of development will be focused on Meath, Wicklow, Fingal and south Dublin. It is all greenfield development. If the local authorities refuse to comply with the regional planning guidelines as they are in place at the moment, it is open to the Minister to issue directions. Indeed, that is happening. We have a scenario, therefore, in which the Minister is publishing a national planning framework while ignoring the fact that huge tracts of land are currently zoned for housing under the national spatial strategy, which has a different core strategy. There is no transitional arrangement to tie the two together or to provide a capital plan to meet the needs of the currently zoned lands. This is not going to work. We need to know how much land remains zoned and whether it is to be carried over to the national planning framework. We need to know where that land is located. I would have expected to see that detail in any national planning framework. Last Friday, 16 February, the day the national planning framework was launched, did not represent a great new dawn on which the planning ship sailed off in a completely new direction. The plan is sailing off in half a dozen different directions. This is a big cargo ship, if Deputies can imagine that, and it will take time to turn it. If one is dragging behind a legacy of commitments to zoned land which have not been calculated for and which are based on a different strategy, I do not see how that can work.

It is worth looking at what happened in what is termed the "greater Dublin area" between 1996 and 2016. That is a 20-year horizon like the one we are looking at now. I use those years as those were the years on which there was a census of population. The centre core of Dublin city grew by 13% while Dun Laoghaire grew by 13%. Fingal grew by 43% and has doubled its population, not that one would notice it from the infrastructure and facilities in place there. South Dublin grew by 22%, Kildare grew by 39%, Meath by 44% and Wicklow by 28%. Most of what has happened has happened on the arc outside the M50.

The laughable thing is that people say nothing happens outside the M50. I can tell them that a lot of houses were developed outside the M50. What is going to occur is that these areas will continue to grow at least at the same rate for the next decade, so announcing a shiny new plan will change nothing on its own. The absence of key public transport initiatives will make the congestion we see in Dublin city centre today look tame. The key priority in regard to tying in what has happened already to the development of the city centre should have been DART underground, which should have been the number one public transport initiative. We need this 7.6 km tunnel to pull together the rail network but, of course, that is postponed.

The profile of development of other cities, such as Cork, Limerick and Waterford, has followed the same pattern of development in the past 20 years, with the real development in the suburbs rather than the core. Galway has bucked that trend but transport infrastructure has not kept pace and congestion is a real issue that needs to be addressed if that city is to achieve the kind of sustainable living that it requires, and which would make it a really attractive location. Better regional balance will only be achieved by initially focusing on a small number of areas as the primary drivers of such a strategy. If limited resources are stretched too thin, then what will occur is a delay in providing a counter-balance, possibly by decades. I am in favour of better regional balance, which I think its good on a number of fronts, for example, in regard to congestion, housing and increased job prospects due to having a significant population base.

Within the plan we saw a long list of projects and some general aspirations. There are many diagrams that appear to connect things up but when we try to drill down, it gives a very different picture. A lot of decoding of language is needed. For example, we are told social housing will be provided for 112,000 families in the next decade in a bid to address the housing crisis. That sounds great but when one starts to drill down into those numbers in the context of the €6 billion for social housing, which is very welcome, we would have to build those 112,000 homes for €100,000 each. The language used is to "provide" 112,000 homes but it does not mean to build them. Decoding is needed.

With regard to the Cork-Limerick motorway, the key ingredient for a PPP is that it has to stack up financially. Typically, if it is a road, there has to be sufficient traffic to collect significant tolls. Indeed, toll roads have been developed that did not reach the threshold and the contract meant the Exchequer had to pay compensation to the operator. The Cork-Limerick motorway is likely to be a case in point. Its specification is to motorway standard but this is because there will be less access on and off, so there is the possibility of tolling it. It is very easy to predict that is what will happen.

We were told by the chairperson-designate at Transport Infrastructure Ireland this morning that he understood the 2011 census was used to inform this plan, not the 2016 census. Given I had a different response on that in reply to a parliamentary question I asked last year, the Minister should clarify which census was used.

The new €3 billion urban regeneration fund is heavily dependent on the private sector, with 100% matching funding required, which is likely to benefit stronger areas as opposed to weaker areas. We see that all new State agencies must be located outside of Dublin. This reminds me of Charlie McCreevy's decentralisation programme. Real decentralisation would mean decentralisation of decision making, not this kind of sop to give the impression that something is happening. If we are to have regional economic and spatial plans, there has to be the means for local decision making rather than having that determined for particular regions.

The big bash in Sligo to announce this plan was a real slap in the face for democracy. The Government does not have a majority mandate; it is quite a small Government of 58 Deputies out of 158. While submissions were sought for this plan and were published, it is not obvious they were taken on board. We should have had a mature engagement in regard to spending money wisely - an honest engagement on how money is collected and where it is spent - because a lot of nonsense is talked and I heard some of it talked here today. For someone who is passionate about strategic planning to the point that I was talking to myself for years on this, I feel this plan really lets down the term "strategic planning". It is a big disappointment from the point of view of how it was progressed; it is a real missed opportunity.

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