Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In what may well be my last Leaders' Questions in the Dáil, I return to familiar territory, an issue I have raised with the Tánaiste and others many times, namely, the delivery of balanced regional development. I understand that the delivery of a balance of development between regions is not something that can be accomplished overnight, particularly when there are significant gaps. It has to be embedded in all Departments and overseen by a senior Minister with responsibility for co-ordination and delivery. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

The reason I can say this with certainty is that the economic gap between the northern and western region and other regions continues to widen and, very unfortunately, the gap also continues to widen between it and regions across the EU. If any policy is working, we will see at least some impact. That impact has to be visible in some areas of the economy. I will give a few examples to illustrate the failure of current policy with regard to balanced regional development. All the figures produced by the Northern and Western Regional Assembly and Eurostat show that the northern and western region is poorly served in terms of national resources. The most recent figures show that since 2016, just 11% of all national projects worth over €1 million were committed to this region even though we have 17% of the population. Shamefully, only 5.7% of all national projects worth over €20 million were committed to this region. Again, this region has 17% of the population. If we look at housing completions last year, a region with 17% of the population had 11% of housing completions. Look at national and local roads. Our local roads budget for the past ten years has been well below the national average and the national roads budget was one third less than the national average.

Those figures are staggering and they are also accurate. Why has the Government not moved decisively to close that economic gap? What is it proposing to do in the future that is different and will make a real change because balanced regional development is not happening?

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