Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I did not hear the Minister for Finance's contribution yesterday but I expect that it was the kind of contribution one would expect of him, outlining the practical realities of how to manage a plan to spend €114 billion over ten years in order to significantly improve infrastructure across the country, including schools, hospitals, roads, flood protection systems and so on. This Government has, for the first time, outlined a ten year plan for capital expenditure which will, of course, face challenges along the way. Those challenges will require review mechanisms and will require us to respond to issues such as skills shortages, particularly in construction. This is particularly problematic at the moment in the context of housing challenges, what we need to build and how quickly we need to do it.

It would be very strange if a Minister for Finance was not outlining the challenges we face in delivering the potential of a plan with the level of ambition contained in Project Ireland 2040. That document is a 20-year planning framework within which we have outlined in detail how we want to spend capital and where we want to spend it over the first ten years. In that way, we have medium-term to long-term planning in place so that we can deal with the kinds of challenges that may arise, including construction cost inflation, the skills we need to deliver on that or the planning systems that we may need to alter, change, improve or amend to get the work done. That is the whole point of ten-year planning. The idea that the Government would announce €114 billion of expenditure and that there would be no challenges in terms of adapting, changing and improving delivery systems over a decade long period, particularly in the context of factors like contingency planning around Brexit, with which we are currently dealing, or other pressures on the system, is unrealistic. The Deputy should not try to create the impression that a hugely ambitious development plan for the country is not deliverable because there are some challenges and blockages that we need to overcome, which was always going to be the case if we were going to deliver on the potential of the Project Ireland 2040 plan. The Deputy is not dealing with reality.

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