Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. We are of course all very glad to have healthy public finances and long may that continue. I am glad the Minister referred to demographics and also infrastructure, especially in his remarks of a moment ago. We hear about the pressure from a demographic point of view due to people growing older, which is always welcome. When delivering public services, we do not ever seem to take into account how we are fortunate to have an increasing population throughout the country of all ages.

The last census recorded a population increase in every county for the first time in a long time. Our population is now in excess of 5 million people and that is a welcome development. The best way to strengthen our economy and the public finances in the long term is to ensure we have modern, up-to-date infrastructure. That is especially important in rural Ireland, where we do not have the road network we need, nor the water supplies or the work space at enterprise centres that can help to create jobs. The more jobs we can create, the more competitive we can help our enterprises and businesses to be. They would then be contributing big-time to the public finances. Let this debate consider demographics, but let it also consider the positive aspects of demographics from the point of view of the need to improve infrastructure in more rural areas in particular.

See this speech in context