Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is the first time I have been compared with or aligned to him, as a politician. I know I have moved to the centre in my middle age. I did not think I had moved quite that far left, but I thank the Deputy for giving us something to ponder.

The Deputy is right to say my party has been in office in various coalitions since 2011. We have not achieved everything we sought to achieve, but on the basis of any objective analysis, our country is a much better place that it was back then. We have gone from mass unemployment and mass youth unemployment to full employment. We have gone from a situation where representatives from the IMF was staying in the Merrion Hotel and calling the shots to one where we are in charge of our own affairs again and can make choices. Our public finances are in good order. Educational attainment for children and young people has never been better. Our life expectancy has never been longer. I hope we all agree the UN does not vote for Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil or the Green Party and is objective. The UN consistently rates us as one of the top ten countries in the world in terms of human development. That is not to diminish in any way the very real challenges we have, particularly in relation to the housing shortage and access to healthcare.

I responded to some valid and correct facts Deputy Harkin put forward with facts that were also correct. There is a tendency in this House for people to choose their facts. I think it is okay to respond with other things. So long as they are facts and not opinions, we should be able to share them. You get a better picture if you look at them in the round, rather than at one set of facts that is put out there to support a particular argument.

I do not think Deputy Shanahan was here, but Deputy Howlin was and I could see him nodding when I made the point that, while Deputy Harkin made an articulate case for greater investment in the north west, which she feels is the region that has been particularly neglected, there were Deputies here from the south east who would make the same case for their region. I had Deputy Shanahan and all the Deputies from the south east in mind, because everyone makes the case for their own region.

The truth is that achieving balanced regional development is difficult. Austria has similar challenges with Vienna. Denmark has a similar challenge with Copenhagen. Having one big city of international scale and other large cities while trying to achieve balanced regional development is a dilemma and struggle for any small country with a big city in it. You see that all over the world. For Britain, for example, the exact same dilemmas and difficulties arise in respect of London. However, we have a programme that I believe is achieving much more balanced regional development. It includes: the national broadband plan, which is the biggest single capital investment in the history of the State; the roads programme, which is almost all outside of Dublin and Cork, certainly outside of Dublin; and the technological universities, which I am committed to and which are making a difference in many regions.

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