Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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As Deputy Jonathan O'Brien is not yet present, I call Deputy Peadar Tóibín.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in the past week, we heard that 500 post offices in this State are unsustainable. Teagasc has stated that only 37% of farms are economically viable. Growth per capitain the west is one quarter of what it is in Dublin. Broadband speeds in the regions that have broadband are 36 times slower than they are in Dublin. The north-west quarter of the country is without a rail line or a decent motorway. Where rail transport exists, it is far too slow. The western rail corridor, which should be very important to the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, remains unfinished.

It was recently announced that water would be pumped from the Parteen basin to Dublin. While I have not taken a decision yet on whether this is the right thing to do, my instinctive thought at the time was that instead of pumping all of this water from the Parteen basin to Dublin, why not put the jobs and the growth in Limerick, right beside the water? This is another example of infrastructure being built to service Dublin at a cost to the State.

The problem is that the Government has a scatter-gun approach to development. Thankfully, a limited amount of money is being spent in some areas but it is being spent without a plan. There is no spatial plan in existence in this State. The State has been developing in a haphazard, ad hocfashion for a long time. The national spatial plan has been defunct since 2002 and we are still awaiting the national planning framework. What it boils down to is Governments fire-fighting in respect of infrastructure in a rudderless fashion.

The Minister of State can see that this as well as I and I am sure his constituents can feel it. We are living in a lopsided economy. There is a damaging over-concentration of resources, economic activity and jobs in the Dublin area. One only need look at Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland as an example.

In recent years most of the jobs supported by Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Authority have landed in Dublin and Cork. In 2010, 37% of inward investment from the IDA was outside Cork and Dublin. In 2011 that figure was 27%: in 2012 it fell to 23%. The figures have recently improved slightly due to the lack of space in Dublin for new firms. Approximately 60% of inward investment is skewed towards Dublin. Not only is rural Ireland gutted by this rudderless Government but Dublin is overheating. The population of Dublin is approximately 40% that of the State. That is out of kilter with the European norm. Even in Britain, for example, where London is considered too big compared with the rest of the country only approximately 13% of the population lives there. The Government is on its way to drawing 50% of the population to the capital city. That is shockingly dangerous for those who live in and outside the city.

Even though that population lives in and around Dublin there are farms within the M50. Thornton Hall, which the Government owns, is under potatoes yet there are people commuting into Dublin from Cavan, Leitrim and Laois. Where is the sense in that? Schools in the west are shedding pupils. Consider the cost of the new schools the Government is building in the mid-east of the country while schools are withering and dying in the west. Where is the financial logic in that lack of development? That is why I am calling on the Government to focus on a plan of action. There is no plan. The Government is staggering along in a rudderless fashion and the cost is family life, investment and economic activity in the rest of the country.

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. Responsibility for key elements of the Government's regional development strategy is shared across a number of Departments and State agencies. For instance, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation oversees the eight regional action plans for jobs, which play a key role in ensuring job growth and enterprise generation across the country. The Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government is responsible for spatial planning and housing and is currently preparing a new national planning framework which will form the basis for future development and investment decisions in the regions. The Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport has policy responsibility for transport infrastructure, ports and airport policy. The financial allocations for these and other areas of investment are set out in the capital investment plan to 2021, which was published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

This Government has been very proactive in terms of regional development and it is clear that policies such as the regional action plans for jobs and the work of agencies such as Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and Udarás na Gaeltachta are having a significant positive effect on the development of the regions. This is borne out by the latest employment figures for the regions. In the past year, employment has grown in all regions of the country, not just Dublin, and employment nationally has been growing continuously for 16 quarters. In quarter three of 2016, data from the Central Statistics Office shows that 72% of all jobs created in the past year were created outside Dublin. Unemployment has fallen in all regions. The Government has set a target of creating an extra 200,000 jobs by 2020, with 135,000 of these outside Dublin. The first progress reports for the regional action plans for jobs will be published shortly and they will show the enormously beneficial work being undertaken across the regions to ensure that a supportive environment is in place for the creation of jobs and the cultivation of enterprise.

As part of this process, I understand that the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and Enterprise Ireland are developing proposals for a regional funding initiative which is aimed at supporting projects and activities that assist, sustain and create jobs in the regions.

In terms of capital investment, the national broadband plan constitutes one of the single biggest investments in rural Ireland for generations, perhaps since rural electrification, and it carries the same level of opportunity in terms of the development of the regions. Under the plan, the Government has committed to delivering a high speed broadband network to more than 750,000 premises, covering 100,000 kms of road network and 96% of the land area of the country. The implementation of the national broadband plan will allow communities and businesses in rural areas to compete effectively and realise their full potential.

In advance of the award of contracts for the roll out of the plan next year, my Department is working closely with the local authorities in every county to facilitate the installation of the broadband infrastructure by identifying and overcoming potential barriers to this installation. The local authorities have also identified approximately 400 strategic sites in their administrative areas which would be ideally suited as priority connection points for high speed broadband.

I would also like to highlight the ongoing developmental work currently being undertaken by my Department in respect of the commitment in the programme for Government to explore the idea of an Atlantic economic corridor. I led discussions with key public bodies on this initiative and more recently my Department undertook a round of discussions with the various chambers of commerce in the western region which published a concept document at the start of the year. A further meeting will take place early in the new year with a view to scoping out a work plan to progress this project.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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The biggest problem affecting the country into the future is split between too many Departments. The Minister of State's Department covers regional development. The Minister of State has been long enough in this place to know that the decisions lie where the budgets exist. The budget for regional development is not within that Department.

As an example of what is happening to this city, traffic on the M50 is growing at ten times the European average. Commutes are slowing down or grinding to a halt if there is an accident on the motorway at the cost of local business. This makes us uncompetitive for foreign direct investment in the future. Meath is another example. It is a great county with really energetic people yet its role in this confused spatial development is that of a dormitory county. The population is increasing fast, to almost 200,000. More Meath workers leave the county every day to work than stay to work there. We have the longest commute in the State. Rush hour is at a crawl at the Meath-Dublin border which is miles away from Blanchardstown. Navan is the biggest town in the State without a rail line. This Government will likely build an extra lane on the M50 before it will build the 16 km of rail line necessary from Pace to Meath.

In 25 years’ time there will be 9 million living on the island of Ireland. This Government needs to think big, be creative and bold. It should consider some of the work that John Moran has done on this. We need to build a city that has the critical mass to break the gravity that Dublin exerts on growth in the State. We need to follow what the Danes did in Aarhus. Development should not be done with a scattergun effect as happened under the last spatial plan which tried to be everything to everybody. I appeal to the Government to get its act together, centralise resources and decision making and make sure when the population reaches 9 million, half of them are not living in Dublin.

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I will not read out the figures for all the areas that have increasing employment. There is no doubt the action plan for jobs worked. We are drawing up an action plan for rural Ireland. The Deputy is speaking my language. In my portfolio it is my job to bring all the State agencies and Departments together and the money must flow with the commitments made in the programme for Government. There are between 60 and 70 commitments for rural Ireland. The biggest single commitment is to broadband. The Deputy was correct to raise that in his opening speech. If we do not have broadband we cannot bring industries into any region.

The Deputy is correct that the money must flow with the action plan we are going to produce. The decision-makers must make decisions now that show that we are serious about creating the infrastructure in rural Ireland, first of all. The Deputy is speaking the same language as I am trying to speak to Government. We must have a plan and that plan must be implemented. Every Government Department will have to play its part. Every Government Department will have to be biased towards rural Ireland.

The Deputy is quite correct that we have a serious problem in Dublin. Good luck to Dublin. It is the capital city and there are many people employed and living there. However, at the same time, we want to try to bring people out into the regions.

With regard to the Action Plan for Jobs in the south east and in other parts of the country, there has been an increase in jobs. We need the same kind of target for rural Ireland as we had for the Action Plan for Jobs. To be fair to the Government and the Taoiseach, a Cabinet sub-committee is dealing with actions for rural Ireland. I intend to lead that along with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, to make sure that we get the infrastructure, the funding and the money to flow with the plan.