Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

It looks fantastic. It is a great plan with great graphics. If one reads it line by line and bit by bit, it has so much to offer but we all know it is aspirational without the investment. I give the example of water infrastructure. We need massive investment in water infrastructure to facilitate housing. The plan references offshore energy potential. We need massive investment in our ports. To work towards it or to progress towards it is not enough. We need tangible achievable objectives.

The housing targets have not been met before so I am still a bit sceptical about what is in this plan but I am more sceptical about the delivery of infrastructure alongside housing. In my constituency, I have seen two strategic development zones, Adamstown and Clonburris. Clonburris, for example, has one full size GAA-rugby pitch and five soccer pitches for an eventual population of 25,000 people. That is all that has been put into the framework plan. If that is what we are going by at the moment, then we need to deliver things a lot better.

Every type of housing needs to be a strategic development zone. Newcastle in my area has a local area plan but it is not worth the paper it is written on because, again, one cannot tie in the schools and the infrastructure alongside the housing. We need to look at that.

We also need to focus on our cities. I have said this previously in other contributions. Dublin should have twice the population within the canals. We must look at how to change the planning laws to make it easier to repurpose business units and commercial units. Similarly in regional distribution we are not looking enough at the midland towns and possibly even a new town to be planned from scratch. We have to do it piece by piece and in an integrated way.

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