Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have to say, I am very disappointed that all the time we are getting to speak about this monumentally comprehensive piece of work is ten minutes. The plan is based on research that has been hosted on the national planning framework website since 24 January. There is a paper on this site called "Prospects for Irish Regions and Counties". Its basic thesis is that larger industrial conglomerations in centres of high population density result in a higher net output per worker. As such, the proposition on which this plan is based is that future developments should be concentrated in four cities, namely, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.

In the report, everywhere outside of these cities is described by the pejorative term "sprawl". The report claims that this kind of concentration will result in a higher national growth, and will also lead to regional growth up to 40 km to 80 km from regional cities. The author of this report quotes Government studies carried out in 1996, 2002 and 2009 to support the link between density and higher output. Interestingly, on page 78 the author includes a scatter plot showing industrial output per worker. He measures this against population density on a county-by-county basis.

The idea was that when taking output per worker and population density, it was expected that as the density increased, the output per worker would increase. The plot purports to show that net output per worker increases with population density from €140,000 at the lowest to approximately €240,000 at the highest. There are a number of errors in the plot and it is extraordinary that the counties are not identified. Strangely, Dublin is omitted from the graph, even though it has a significantly higher population density than any other county. Leaving Dublin, the most densely populated county, out means that, scientifically, the claim is baseless. What they tried to do was take data from the census of industrial production for the years 2002 to 2006 and measure it against the population census of 2016 for some peculiar reason. This is shoddy work by any account.

County Mayo has the second lowest population density in the State. The county has half the population of Galway city and county and just over half the density at 23 people per sq. km as opposed to 41 per sq. km in Galway and its industrial workforce is significantly less than half that of Galway, yet gross industrial output in Mayo is equal to and in some years exceeds that of Galway. If the inputs into production in Galway are taken into account, net industrial output in Mayo is one and a third to one and a half times that in Galway. In other words, Mayo, with a low population density, is producing one and a half times what is being produced in Galway per worker. This is not unique to that county. I am sure Deputy Healy will be interested to learn that rural Tipperary has a net output per worker which is a multiple of that of Waterford city and county. Kildare with a density of 131 persons per sq. km has a higher net output per worker than Dublin city with a density of 4,687 per sq. km.

What blows the mind on the theory on which all this crumbling castle is based is that the comparison could not be starker between Mayo, which has the second lowest population density in the State, and Dublin city, which has the highest, as the output per industrial worker in Mayo is approximately twice that of Dublin. The thesis started out with a theory that industrial workers produce more in cities. The Government then published a major foundation document, yet according to one person's analysis, the figures have been skewed to get an answer that is not there. Furthermore, industry in Mayo is scattered around the county. Coca-Cola is based in Ballina, Baxter in Castlebar, Allergan in Westport and McHales in Ballinrobe. They are not all agglomerated in one part of the county. I am beginning to wonder, because I have not had the opportunity to read the entire document and second guess all the research, whether it is based on a false premise. If so, perhaps the future will not turn out the way people think it will.

Unfortunately, ten minutes is not sufficient even to start dealing with all the issues but I would like to address two specific issues. I would love to see a spatial plan that would eliminate the horrendous social deprivation in my native city of Dublin. I would love to be able to say in 20 years that all the people in Dublin, not just those in the leafy suburbs, live in a society that is driven more by industrial output than the drugs trade and that the scourge of social deprivation has been dealt with and similar comments apply to Limerick, Tipperary town and all the black spots that we mapped so carefully in government under the RAPID programme. If that could be done, we would have a plan worthy of consideration. There is a great deal of repetition and contradiction in the plan and one would think it was written to confuse. There is no mention of a great plan to deal with social deprivation, which is a scandal before all of us but which we tend to wish would go away. I recall as Minister with responsibility for urban deprivation that I could not get the media to hang around the House and be interested in it but that does not mean we should fail to be concerned.

I refer to the second issue that must be examined. Rarely in life is the future a repetition of the past. I studied science and I recall lecturers discussing the assumptions of late 19th century scientists about light and its nature and so on. The theory was blown sky high out of the water. We know from previous experience that most people plan on the basis of what happened in the past and not on what is likely to happen in the future. The visionaries are those that see what is happening. If the Minister visits rural areas in counties Galway or Meath, he knows that as soon as people get the fibre cable, the necessity for them to be agglomerated every day will suddenly disappear. I love coming up to Dublin. I come up because of my job most weeks but I would come up anyway to go to Croke Park because I love going to matches there because they are great social events. I like coming to the city now and again for social events but I would prefer to live where I live. Many high net worth individuals whose main work is done on a computer and who work worldwide right through the time zones will not work in conventional offices. They work from wherever they are. Will they choose to sit in traffic jams in the morning before arriving to work in a cramped office or will they choose to live in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean or the mountains? That is the future but the Government is planning for the past. This plan is fundamentally flawed in its concept and I ask the Minister of State to check the figures I quoted, which are now on the record. I hope I get a detailed response as to why these figures are wrong. The graph does not give us the counties.

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