Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Neville for raising this issue. It is fair to say he raises these issues on a very ongoing basis. Recently I was at Kildare Chamber of Commerce with Deputy Neville and the Minister, Deputy Heydon, where we had a good chance to sit down and talk with the Kildare Chamber of Commerce. What I heard very clearly from it was the growing frustration that the county, not dissimilar to my county, is seeing a growing population and infrastructure that really needs to grow to keep up with the extra population. One of the frustrations I heard at that meeting, and which I hear from Deputy Neville regularly and which I know he highlights in his role as Vice Chair of the Oireachtas committee on infrastructure, is the need to remove blockages and barriers that delay projects.

What I can say, and what Deputy Neville and the people of Kildare know, is that we now have a record level of capital funding provided through the national development plan. It is a large amount of money that we can invest now and in the years ahead. We need to make sure the urgency with which these investments are required is also in place, in terms of not allowing bureaucracy and red tape delay the delivery of planning. The Department of public expenditure and reform now has a new infrastructure delivery unit. It is the job of that Department not only to count the money but also to drive forward the delivery of the projects that are funded. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, will be back to Cabinet in the coming month with proposals from the expert group he has set up on what we can do to make processes more simple and straightforward and speed up delivery. We have also allocated money in the budget, for example, for, An Coimisiún Pleanála so that turnaround times and planning decisions can be much more speedy.

As I have said, Irish Water ran a very effective public relation campaign highlighting the need for more funding. The Government has provided the funding but there is a proviso that we want the funding to be used to enable more homes to be built. There is a very clear understanding of the Government's expectation on this. It is not acceptable that homes are built in Kildare for which people are awaiting ESB connections, or that there are homes that could be built in Kildare if people could have access to water or wastewater. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, has reminded me that additional funding has been provided in the budget that will allow us to have a further round of the URDF, and we will reflect the point Deputy Neville has made on a balanced focus for the funding.

I know a bugbear of public representatives in Kildare is the proportion of local property tax the county gets. I understand there have been improvements in this. I am proud that Maynooth one of the first towns in Ireland to have student accommodation that has been at least part funded by the Government. We need to continue to do more on this. I want Deputy Neville to know I am very conscious of the infrastructural needs in growing areas of our country, such as north Kildare. We have put the funding in place and we are now trying to remove the blockages and barriers to delivery. The budget, alongside the revised national development plan, gives us a real basis on which we can proceed with confidence.

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