Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy John Cummins on his role as Minister of State. He has been there for a few months but it is my first time speaking to him directly in the Chamber. Deputy Cummins was a great councillor friend of mine. Obviously, he is from Waterford and I am from Kildare but we were great friends for so many years that is a great honour to be able to speak to him in this way today.

I want to support the revised national planning framework but also to call for its full and fair implementation, particularly, as the Minister of State will know, in regions close to my heart like north Kildare, where the gap between population growth and infrastructure delivery has ever widened. The varied plan on page 27 clearly states that the mid-east region, which has Kildare at its heart, has experienced population growth at more than twice the national average in recent decades. However, when we look at the detail, the imbalance becomes stark. I did a word count and, in the entire framework, Dublin is mentioned 169 times, Cork is mentioned 94 times and Galway is mentioned 71 times. These are the three largest counties in the country. County Kildare, despite being the fourth largest county, is referenced just seven times. That disparity speaks volumes to me.

Towns like Leixlip, Celbridge, Maynooth, Naas, Clane and Kilcock have, to an extent, become commuter hubs and, as I have referenced before, are absorbing wave after wave of housing development without the commensurate delivery of roads, schools, transport links or community amenities. We are seeing the results of decades of, if not necessarily a planning failure, then definitely a lack of implementation of the required infrastructure. Houses were built first and everything else was left to play catch-up, and in many cases, the catch-up has still to be done.

Let us be very clear. The framework does acknowledge this issue. It states:

... local infrastructure needs, including in particular social and community infrastructure in areas such as education and amenity, and addressing the legacy of rapid growth, must be prioritised.

[...]

... housing development should be infrastructure led and primarily based on employment growth, accessibility by sustainable transport modes and quality of life ...

I fully support all of those principles but, at the same time, while we are seeing those principles on paper, so far, they have not been continued in north Kildare. Therefore, while I support the document and everything in it, I call for it to be delivered when this actually gets rolled out.

North Kildare is home to world-class employers, such as Intel in Leixlip, of which we have heard a lot in the news in the last two weeks in a way that we would not have liked, and the Kerry Group in Naas, as well as the rapidly growing research and education footprint of Maynooth University. We are pulling more than our weight economically in Kildare yet, on the ground, I feel we are being left behind when we talk about investment in infrastructure. The key deficits must be addressed.

Today, in the House, I will call out a few of those places. Celbridge, a town where the population might have been 1,000 people 30 or 40 years ago, is now home to 23,000 people yet it only has one bridge across the River Liffey. The need for the second bridge was there 30 years ago but it still has not been given. In Maynooth, LIHAF funding was put in place in 2010 but the relief road has not been delivered. There is talk of bringing DART+ out to Maynooth yet only a few miles down the road, there is a train station sitting in Kilcock that we are not planning to bring DART+ to. Clane is a town that is growing and growing and traffic congestion is a huge issue. At Castletown House, which was the major amenity in the north east of the county, public access was lost. Three years ago, it had 1 million visitors but that is now down to a trickle because we have lost access from the M4.

While we need these reports, we also need delivery. Strategic planning must result in shovel-ready projects that are properly funded and fast-tracked for areas that have borne the brunt of previous unbalanced growth. That is why I am in favour of the revised planning framework. I do not feel that north Kildare has benefited in the way it should have. We must redress the imbalance not by slowing growth in our county but by accelerating the delivery of infrastructure. We will then be able to take more.

North Kildare has played its part and is ready to continue to play its part. I, for one, will be at the forefront of that. I have done it as a councillor. I have worked on local area plans. I have delivered houses in Leixlip, where we have seen thousands more houses delivered in my time as a councillor. I have done the same for other local area plans in Celbridge. I have pushed for county development plans to have more houses. Yes, we have allowed them because, ultimately, we know that with housing, we need to find places for everyone to live. However, at the same time, in our area, we also need to get the infrastructure delivered behind that.

I wanted to give my message today because I am in favour of the plan and I know the plan needs to change. However, I also wanted to speak strongly about the need for the key items that were raised in that plan to be delivered in my area of north Kildare and to speak on behalf of my constituents.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, for taking the time to be here today. As I said, it is great to be able to speak to him in this way. I wish him the best of luck in the coming years of his term.

See this speech in context