Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)

I looked through the document. When you read it, it all sounds very worthy as did the document before it and many other documents this Government and previous governments have produced. These are all nice, shiny, glossy documents that have very good sounding objectives and visions in place. Take, for example, national policy objective 12. It reads: “Ensure the creation of attractive, liveable, well designed, high quality urban places that are home to diverse and integrated communities that enjoy a high quality of life and well-being.” That is absolutely fantastic. How could we argue against that? However, the reality is we have seen many of these documents with many similar objectives. The issue for us as a country is not writing these documents but rather implementing them and seeing them delivered. To date, we have not seen the development of communities.

I only have a few minutes, so I will use this opportunity to talk about my constituency in Wicklow. Wicklow neighbours Dublin. We have seen considerable population growth over recent years and compared with other parts of the country we have seen quite a bit of housing go in. However, the housing is not affordable. We are talking €800,000 for a four-bed and €650,000 for a three-bed. That is a pretty standard price. For many who were born and raised in Wicklow, the reality is they will not be able to afford to remain in Wicklow. Many parents with adult children in Wicklow are really conscious of that and are incredibly worried about their children. Once you force children to a different county, or indeed country, you are breaking up that family network and the core fundamentals of community. You are taking away families' opportunities to engage with their grandchildren and taking away childminders in many instances, and when there are elderly parents you are taking away adult children’s ability to care for their parents as they age and that fundamental promise of community is gone.

The document talks about schools, public transport, healthcare facilities, primary care centres and Garda stations – all the things we need, should have and should be investing in but that we have not been investing in.

We talk about education and the need to have sufficient educational facilities and infrastructure but we just do not have it. It seems like the Department of Education is continually chasing its tail in providing sufficient educational spaces. Again, I am talking about Wicklow. At the moment, I am dealing with five children who have no place for secondary school this September. That could be seen as a blip, an unfortunate instance where the Department will hopefully step in and resolve that, but last year was the same and previous year and the year before that. Every year the exact same thing happens. We do not have enough primary school or secondary school places. You can see the problems moving from Greystones to Newtownmountkennedy to Wicklow town and in Blessington where we have infrastructure and where kids are in modular buildings. It takes years to get the proper permanent building in place. Not only does it take years but it takes hours, weeks and months of parents fighting for it to get it in place. That is not acceptable.

This week, public transport for Greystones and Kilcoole went up in price. That is a crazy decision.

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