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

When you look at Government spending, you cannot just look at capital expenditure; you also have to look at current expenditure. That covers areas like social protection, education and healthcare. Most of our spending is current, not capital. When you look at capital projects, you cannot just look at the ones valued at more than €200 million. You have to look at them in the round.

Of course, the smaller projects go to the more rural counties and we cannot discount them.

To answer the question on what I think the south east will have in the next five or ten years, it will have much better roads. I was in the south-east yesterday and travelled on some of the roads. They have already improved dramatically - just look at Enniscorthy and New Ross. There is more road investment to come. There will be much better jobs, which we see happening already, in particular in Waterford city with increased investment from multinationals. That will be a real positive. The university will be expanded. As the Deputy knows, we are in negotiations to secure the Waterford Crystal site. We are nearly there. There will be a new engineering building and on-campus accommodation. We will do our best to make sure that we can get the airport operating again, willing to provide matching finance for that, and that still stands. Of course, implementation of the national broadband plan will bring high-speed fibre to every home, farm and business in every county in the south east and everywhere in Ireland and that will be transformative. We are probably one of only three countries in the world that will achieve that.

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