Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome the Minister's statement and the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. With respect to the rights and wrongs of this and previous Governments' challenging of the case, I was not a Member of the Oireachtas in those days, so I defer to the experts on tax law and international tax law.

I believe some of those experts are in this House, especially sitting across the floor from us.

The Minister, Deputy Chambers, said in his remarks that this is a real opportunity to invest in our future. I want to use my speaking time, which is precious and limited in this House, to talk about the future rather than the past and the potential for this windfall to develop our country for the better. I am surprised that colleagues across the House did not use their time for those purposes with perhaps the exception of Deputy Nash of Labour. It is predicted that the population of this country will grow by approximately 1 million people in the next 15 years or so. I think most in the House agree that it is in Ireland's interests that the expected population growth and the distribution of it across the island should be guided at least to some extent by decisions of Government. If Government by contrast takes a hands-off approach or even just a reactive approach to managing the development and growth of the country, then we are always going to be chasing ourselves and dealing with crises we might have avoided had we been more strategic, perhaps less conservative in our predictions, more ambitious in our targets and far more far-sighted in our spending decisions.

The challenges in housing, health, energy and transport are to some degree or other fuelled by a failure of ambition to be strategic and a failure to be far-sighted. We find ourselves needing 60,000 homes per year, not 30,000 as we thought. In my home city of Limerick at the heart of the mid-west region, we probably need another model 4 hospital, not simply an extension to the bed blocks in the one we have. We need electricity infrastructure to support industrial, commercial and residential development like we never predicted. The same goes for our water and wastewater infrastructure. We need to build road and rail lines now it seems, but we are only deciding to do so when the traffic is backed up or the carriages are at capacity. The decision on what to do with the windfall that is coming to us, that is, the Apple billions, must be informed first by the need to be far more strategic about how our country develops and second by the real opportunity we have to rebalance our island.

The last ten years have seen unprecedented economic growth in this country. While this is very welcome, it is giving us many challenges, some of which I mentioned previously and some of which the Apple windfall, subject to a decision of Government, might provide us with the money we need to resolve them. It is not just about money, however. It is about having a good plan. Unfortunately, we do not have a good plan. The national planning framework, NPF, review is going through Government at the moment. We expect a decision will be made on that soon. The ambition is just not there in the NPF review as it currently stands with respect to the population targets that are set for the regional cities of Waterford, Cork, Galway, my home city of Limerick or, indeed, the Limerick-Shannon axis. The population targets that are in that review should be revised because if they are not, they will not justify the kind of investment this Apple money could pay for that could lead to fast population growth and economic growth in our regional cities. It is critical that those populations targets are revised before the final NPF is published.

Deputy Barry talked about not having a shopping list. I do have a shopping list. It is called a strategic rail review, and it sets out a path for the development of rail in this country. I see Deputy Canney opposite taking an interest. I firmly believe the western rail corridor, which Deputy Canney has soldiered on over many years, should be invested in and built as a matter of priority for this Government. It should not just be the western rail corridor as far as Claremorris, and I know Deputy Canney will agree, it should extend on to Sligo as well. We have incredible ambition in the mid-west for growth, but that growth can only happen if we build a metropolitan railway system connecting Shannon Airport, as is supported by the strategic rail review and which can be paid for using the Apple money. It is costed in the strategic rail review at approximately €200 million. It can be built in five or six years. It should be one of the highest priorities of Government to build this infrastructure to set the mid-west on a path of fast growth, supported by metropolitan rail development, where rail will open up land for housing development and high-density, high-quality, affordable housing for our citizens and young people and those who have moved to the mid-west region. This is set out in the strategic rail review. The Apple money can support the development of this infrastructure, not just in the mid-west but in Galway, Cork and Waterford. This money - this windfall accruing to Ireland - represents a huge opportunity to rebalance our island and the way to do it as fast as possible is to invest in rail infrastructure.

It is worth mentioning that when we make decisions about State and public investments in this country, we bend over backwards to show that they should not be made. There is a case to be made for a relaxation of the rules around public spending because this infrastructure is fundamentally good. It will cause the growth and development of our regions and regional cities and a rebalancing of this country, which is not just good for outside the M50 but for inside the M50 too. We have a situation whereby our capital city is creaking at the seams and bloating, and young people cannot afford houses. We cannot build houses quickly enough. We do not have the infrastructure to support the development of more houses. The answer is to rebalance our island and this windfall that is accruing to this country should be used to that end. That is, of course, allowing for the rules around fiscal spending. There are important rules and those constraints are there for a reason. However, we have to accept that this kind of infrastructure is fundamentally good and should be pursued as a priority of the Government, and that is the opportunity we have now.

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