Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very pleased to speak on this motion. The year 2020 was an exceptional one and we have not been able to achieve the capital expenditure that we wanted to. It is sensible to roll it over in this way. What Covid-19 has done to the management of our economy and to the management of our public finances is to provide an extraordinary counter cyclical opportunity. This is situated against a completely different approach from the European Central Bank and a different approach generally in how we think about economies, stimulus programmes and in how we plan and imagine our economies and societies for the future. There are, of course, no advantages to Covid-19.

We have had an opportunity to reflect on how we live our lives and to think about how we want to continue to live them in future. I refer to where we want to live our lives, how we want to get to and from work and how we are going to plan for those aspects over the next ten years. I am not sure we would have ever had this opportunity in other circumstances, or it might have taken an extremely long time.

The national development plan, NDP, and the national planning framework on which it is based, was conceived in earlier times and before we had this opportunity to reflect. The effort at that earlier time, with which I was privileged to be involved, was intended to try to dampen development in Dublin and push it out to the other cities to achieve a better regional balance across the island. The primary driver of that process was the climate agenda in respect of trying to ensure we were not overdeveloping a single location. The aim was to provide real communities, where it would be possible for people to do all that they wanted to do in cities on the rest of this island, and not just in Dublin. Included in that aim were activities such as going to a cinema or to the theatre, to work in the high technology area or anything that people may have wanted to do around the different parts of the island. It was a process, however, driven by an urge for compact urban development, so that people would not have been commuting long distances to and from work.

That idea concerning commuting to work, and over long distances to work, has now been turned on its head. We must now think differently about work and commercial space and the repurposing of those spaces in the years to come. We have a major opportunity to reconceive our cities. There is a great opportunity to reimagine how Dublin has been used, the scale of commercial space and whether, and how, it may be possible to convert some of that space into residential space. I refer to reinvigorating our city and town centres and making them vibrant places where people can really live. Such a process could, in its own way, help to suppress the demand for more and more housing out in the hinterland of the city. That demand still exists, notwithstanding the national planning framework and its placement on a statutory footing.

This is a creative opportunity which we may not get again because we may not have the political, social and cultural space to do it. In the repurposing of this money, and in planning for the next two budgetary cycles, I urge the Minister to really think about whether a team might be put together to imagine creative changes which need to be made to the national planning framework, about which a national consultation is ongoing. Thought must also be given to how that undertaking is going to be driven from within the Civil Service and how that process of reimagining can be driven for the benefit of our people in the years to come.

On this specific spending, I agree with the previous speakers regarding not mentioning constituency projects. It is difficult as a Teachta to reconcile the challenge posed by being, on one hand, a national legislator here to speak on the planning of the national finances as much as anything else, while, on the other hand, addressing the needs of constituents concerning schools and other similar things. Instead of mentioning different schools or other issues, therefore, I suggest that it is not sustainable for us to reach the point where Teachtaí must beg for the redevelopment of schools. We cannot get to a point where schools are based in prefabricated buildings for years, without any certainty about what will happen the following year. That is an unsustainable financial and political model which favours clientelism and local lobbying. It is not a sensible and grown-up way to plan. The need for school developments is already visible. The schools themselves are well able to articulate those needs, and they have done so.

Projections of our growing population allow us to know where people are living and where the resulting demand is. We can see from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, data where more schools are going to be needed. We cannot have a situation where schools are begging for money and begging the Department of Education for redevelopment and for an architect to visit. It is an unsustainable way of planning, and I urge the Minister to use his offices and his Department to require that a different model be adopted in the Department of Education. I refer to a model which is better planned, frankly, than the current model and which would not require me and other Deputies to come in and beg for money for different schools in different places.

This is the final opportunity that can be availed of in respect of this money, and other moneys, in the broader context of what I said about the existing opportunity to operate counter-cyclically, in the area of addressing our overwhelming climate agenda and the associated projects which are essential to allow us to continue to survive. An example is the substantial water treatment upgrades necessary in different parts of the country, particularly in my constituency. These are massive capital projects requiring urgent investment. There will be financial implications for the State in respect of environmental fines if we cannot resolve these problems, which would just be wrong. While we have this counter-cyclical opportunity, and it will not come along all that often, we must invest in the manner that I have outlined.

We must also think about how we can use our existing space in respect of horticulture and waste management to try to drive ahead with the development of horticulture, food provision and food security for this island. Several opportunities are evident when we look around our cities for developments in vertical farming, for example, and for taking steps that have not been available or desirable thus far. This is a unique opportunity to reimagine Dublin city centre and city centres generally. The revision of the national development plan, on foot of the national planning framework, if that itself needs changes, is a substantial opportunity, and I urge the Minister to use the best resources available in respect of imagination and creativity to try to drive this endeavour.

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