Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

God forbid the day anyone would ask for the same list for the eastern region. We would be here for a week. The reality is 9.9%. That is what the Minister of State read out. Where is the missing 9%? We always get small projects, but big things are needed. Taking projects in excess of €20 million, we are missing 12%. The population of the region is 17% and we have only 5% of the investment, so we would nearly need to treble the input of projects. Looking at rail investment, for example, despite the fact that there was a commitment in Transport 21 and a Government decision - I checked this - made in the 2000s to extend the railway line to Tuam and to Claremorris, it has not happened yet. As I pointed out, many houses in the west of Ireland do not have a public water supply. There are a whole lot of complications that arise from that situation, so we need rebalancing of the infrastructure spend.

It seems to me absolutely extraordinary that there is this mantra of balanced regional development again and again, but then we just leave it to the Departments and away they go and they do not answer to anybody for balanced regional development. That is just what it is - a mantra that does not have any meaning. When you challenge that mantra with hard figures, all you get is the Department coming back regurgitating a reply it gave in the Dáil to me. It is the same answer and the same litany and does not address the issue. I am not blaming the Minister of State individually for coming in here with a script given by the Department, but it is time we got balanced regional development. To be quite honest, it would take a lot of pressure off the east coast of this country if we had balanced regional development. As somebody who has spent quite a considerable time in my life in the development role, developing industry, social services and so forth on the ground, the reality was that the biggest inhibitor was a lack of basic infrastructure.

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