Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take the Minister of State's point with regard to jobs. Meath is a commuter county and comparator counties are Louth, Kildare and Wicklow, all of which get far more jobs from the IDA per capita than Meath. I too would pair the population with jobs if I was in the Government's position.

Let us look at the population statistics. Between 2006 and 2016 the population of Navan increased by 5,322 persons, which is roughly 532 per year, despite the long period of stagnant growth during those years. The draft plan which the national framework document seems to be considering would only allow for some 376 more people to live in Navan every year. To do that, we are talking about de-zoning some 205 hectares of land that has been zoned for housing development in that area. This would be detrimental to every club, every school and every business in the area. Any enterprise of any size would never consider Meath again because it would realise it cannot get new workers to live in Meath because of this target or cap.

Investment has been withheld from Meath for generations, for example, investment in the rail line. We were promised by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for years that the rail line would be built yet it has never happened. The chances of getting the rail line in the future would be radically reduced if this target or cap were in place.

I note the Minister of State says these are targets. However, targets in a plan such as the national framework document are not fuzzy figures to be thrown around and discussed. People are employed to pursue targets. Their jobs are to implement targets. If the Minister of State talks to any of the officials in the authorities in this area, they will say they will pursue these targets because it is their job to do so. Indeed, it will be a failure in their eyes if they do not achieve these targets. Why have a national development plan with targets and then say the targets are not really that important to the whole process? If that is the case, the national development plan is a ball of smoke in the first place. Either the targets are real and the national development plan is real, or they are not.

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