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

I thank Deputy Shanahan for bringing this legislation forward. It is an enormous amount of work to bring forward a Private Members' Bill. I am well aware of that. The level of dedication, commitment and work with the parliamentary legal advisers and the drafting team is some amount of work for a Deputy and his or her team. I thank him and acknowledge that. It is important that we have this debate. I thank Deputies for their contributions on the Second Stage of this Bill.

I would like to make a number of points. As a Dublin Deputy, I remind the House that a Fine Gael Government introduced the national planning framework on a statutory basis in 2018. It was the first time a government put in place a spatial planning plan on a statutory basis so that it could not be interfered with. The whole purpose of that planning framework was to stop the growth of Dublin and to try to drive development to the west and to the other cities so that they would develop by at least 50%. We wanted to have contained cities so that people would not need to come to Dublin for something unless they wanted to come to Dublin. The idea was that population and investment growth would be pushed to those cities. The specific purpose of the planning framework introduced by a Fine Gael Government and put on a statutory basis was to drive investment, in particular to the west and to south. I do not know why any Deputies would have heard me talk about wind energy and development, but if they have heard me do so, they will know that all I talk about is the opportunity off the west coast, the south coast and the north-west coast to develop floating wind energy and to be able to have-----

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