Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Fergus O'Dowd is in possession.

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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As I said, this is a very important debate. What I am really talking about is the future of the greater Drogheda area, which has a population, by any projection, be they those of the Department or our own community, definitely in excess of the 50,000 persons which is the requirement to be a city. What has the greater Drogheda area got that will attract the decision of the Government and attract inward investment? We have high capacity broadband, the best in the country, which runs right through our town. We have top class motorway connections and a rail connection. We also have some infrastructural deficits which can and will be met by city investment. For instance, the Drogheda northern cross route, which is an access route for thousands of houses which have been in design and planning for a long time, could be constructed if the funding is found nationally to assist in its construction. To link up the north and south, we need a new bridge on the east of the town, which would link up the port and port developments to east Meath and right out onto the motorway.

Obviously, most of all, we need a town manager or a manager for what I will call the GDA, the greater Drogheda area. If we put in place a CEO with the salary of the chief executive of a county council to manage the greater Drogheda area, working with and associating with a new initiative of the managers in both Meath and Louth, it could be an imaginative solution in terms of finding a way around the impasse about extending boundaries. I personally would have no problem extending the boundary. The population is expanding and it is clear the population needs will only be met by proper, single decisive authority for this area. It is a question of developing that through the process to which I have referred, and a city manager will make all the difference.

We have other infrastructure requirements. There is no LEO for the 60,000 people who live in the area and such an office would add to the capacity of the town to assist in job creation.

I would add that Drogheda has a vision. The Mill in Drogheda has a vision for our business people. The proposed M1 payments corridor is an example of the potential enterprise and job growth that can be achieved in Drogheda and the greater area. I feel it is a very attractive location for FinTech companies. There are many local players who are looking at how Drogheda and the whole corridor could develop in this sector. I very much welcome the discussions around that issue locally, and I hope they will be listened to nationally.

The plan for our area can only be decided by the people of the area. The centre of gravity and decision making in Meath is in Navan, and in Louth it is in Dundalk. However, Drogheda, which is the biggest town, does not currently have the necessary local government decision making infrastructure.

When we talk about Navan, Tralee, Wexford or places like Sligo each and every one of them is smaller than Drogheda but they all have something that Drogheda does not have. They have a local based county council, a decision-making body which is in the centre and heart of their community. We do not have that in Drogheda where we do not have a council or a borough council. It was done away with in the past and I believe that it must come back. I know that there are plans for changes in our local government reform, and hand-in-hand with our national planning framework changes there must be increased capacity of local government and changes in local government to allow decision-making locations like Drogheda become true and proper administrative cities where they can do their business.

I believe the whole community in the Drogheda and in the greater Drogheda area are behind this plan. Our business people and all our political parties are signing up to the proposal that Drogheda must be part of this plan. I welcome the fact that the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government, of which I am a member, today agreed to recommend to the Minister that Drogheda would be included, either as part of a linear city with Dundalk and Newry or as a stand-alone separate city.

I am glad the Minister of State is in the Chamber and is listening to what we are saying. Bad planning has been responsible for the appalling planning mess in which east Meath ended up. Good planning would bring east Meath and Drogheda and south Louth together in a new, decisive city that could serve all of the people in the area very well.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I am happy to speak on the national planning framework. For many years I have called for a significant re-evaluation of the status currently assigned to the town and environs of Clonmel under the then national spatial strategy. We were ignored. I want to salute the members of Tipperary County Council planning department who engineered a significant review of the 2002-2020 national spatial strategy as part of their efforts to upgrade the importance of the town on a national level as far back as 2014 when the consultation process for the national planning framework had only begun.

It is clear at this point that Clonmel is suffering from what is essentially a failure to recognise the true regional and national importance of the town. The Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, is not too far away from it in the south east and he knows the areas himself. It is a proud town and a good town and we kept Cromwell out of it. We were under siege for ten days but we kept them out. We could not, however, keep big Phil out. The former Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, or the enforcer as I call him, destroyed our town council, took it away and vanished it.

Under the then national spatial strategy Clonmel was still designated as a county town when in reality it outperforms many of the designated higher order centres in terms of key socio-economic strengths and the potential to build on existing opportunities. Clonmel may not have met the criteria but it is well qualified. We were sadly abandoned by the spatial strategy. That is not acceptable. It is a gateway.

We have now been let down again because we recently gave a proposal to the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, to connect with the M24. The Taoiseach and the Minister have announced the M24 route, prematurely I believe as the national development plan is not due until December. The Government has also announced the road from Limerick to Cork. We want it to come from Limerick to Cahir. We have a motorway from Cahir to Cork and Dublin, which is under-utilised. The road could continue to Clonmel, the land is earmarked for this road and it is designed. It could bypass Mooncoin in County Kilkenny, which is an awful place for traffic, and Carrick-On-Suir, and go right on to Waterford. It is about connectivity of Galway to Foynes in Limerick and the ports of Cork, Rosslare and Waterford. Anyone with a brain in their head could see the strategic impact of this proposal. It would save €380 million, being cheaper than the Limerick to Cork motorway. I have no objection to the Limerick to Cork M20 going ahead as it is needed also, but if we could save €380 million many other infrastructure projects could have been developed. It would be joined up thinking. In the context of Brexit the ports in Rosslare and Waterford become more important. I do not know if it was political but the Minister announced it anyway, even though there is only €15 million available this year to do the design. What was the point of announcing it? We could have saved €380 million. I often criticise him but in fairness to the Tipperary County Council CEO Joe McGrath, he and his engineers designed it and brought it to Government. It is a very good plan but it should have been given more thought and the two motorways could have been done together, in tandem if necessary. I am not anti the Cork road at all but this was an obvious link right through from the west down to the south east. It would create connectivity from Waterford to Dublin also, for tourism and for business, and especially with the impact of Brexit.

As such the existing designation is hampering our ability to become far more actively embedded in policy decisions that can create enhanced, globally competitive and dynamic economic conditions. These goals are, after all, the explicit aims of the national planning framework, or so we are told - one would wonder when we see what is happening.

We also need to see practical policy measures designed to encourage more balanced regional development. By any standard Clonmel is a significant regional player and that is why we need an urgent reassessment, which not only better reflects that reality but which also takes seriously Clonmel's central position at the heart of the recently defined southern region. This is very important. We had a meeting here recently about a south east university, attended also by the Minister of State. Clonmel was always the biggest inland town in the State. There are arguments now that other towns such as Drogheda and Athlone might try to outstretch us, but I do not believe they will.

We have strengths in Clonmel such as a strong research and innovation capacity and the availability of essential strategic infrastructure. I shall salute this foreign direct investment such as Merck Sharp & Dohme, Boston Scientific and Abbott Ireland Vascular Division. Clonmel Healthcare is vacant currently but hopefully it will get going again. We are very big in the pharma industry and I thank those companies for giving a commitment to Clonmel and the staff they have. I will fight my corner any day regarding corporation tax. They must be kept because of the jobs involved, the suppliers that supply them and all the taxes they pay. It is worth a fortune to our region and to the State.

It is my wish that many of the concerns emerging from a rural perspective would make their way into a reconsideration of the national planning framework. We have to do this, otherwise it is being rushed. During the debate on our motion last week with regard to Cork city taking over the county, and other counties are suffering the same, including our council amalgamation in Tipperary, I had said that the national planning framework cannot afford to become a source of uncertainty about rural rejuvenation. We have enough of that from other areas without it being embedded in this key document.

Many Deputies, including the previous speaker, Deputy O'Dowd, have spoken about Drogheda and the proud role of Drogheda borough council and Clonmel. There were 11 such councils that were banished at the stroke of a pen by the then Minister, Phil Hogan. I am supporting Former Local Authorities Éire, FLAME with its legal action regarding the abolition of these councils. We were told in the programme for Government that there would be a commitment to a plebiscite to reintroduce borough or town councils, provided that people wanted them and there was no cost to the State. We have no problem with that. The members who have served on Clonmel borough council, and many other borough councils over the decades, were not in it for the money. They were in it for the betterment of their towns, for tourism, for families, for housing and for everything else. They were active. I salute them and compliment them for their work over the years. We had a proud record in Clonmel, Cashel, Carrick-On-Suir, Durlas Éile, Templemore, Tipperary town and Nenagh. They all had their own councils and they were just banished. It is a big loss because decision making is thwarted and people have been shut out from democracy. That must not happen in this national planning framework.

We must think of rural Ireland. Lip-service is no good. Dublin is jammers. We walk out the front door here and we see cranes everywhere and the Ceann Comhairle has just informed Members, after a meeting with the Captain of the House, that we will have a crane in the grounds of Leinster House when we return after Hallowe'en. Dublin is alive and well. It is vibrant with building. It is not houses: it is all offices, which I also welcome because we need offices and companies coming in to the country post-Brexit. We also need some semblance of recognition that it is not all about Dublin. The most recent survey on OECD economic activity is that 52% of our economic activity is in Dublin. Yet, one cannot get a place to stay. There is no room for the homeless and there are social problems that come with that. We need something fair. We are not begging. We are entitled to our fair share. Tipperary is a proud county and we want Clonmel in the first instance and all the towns I have mentioned, including Cahir which never had a council and which is a gem in the eye and a wonderful tourism spot, to be supported.

I am delighted that the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Boxer Moran, told me earlier that he has agreed to come down and visit Cahir Castle and Swiss Cottage. We want to show off what we have. The Minister of State, Deputy Joe McHugh, might come down to see it too. I do not know if he has ever been down with us. Beidh fiche fáilte roimh. He would be welcome.

We do not have a begging bowl out, we are a proud country that simply wants due recognition of what we have and support for our amenities and facilities. We want due support for the local authority and a fair crack of the whip on roads funding and other infrastructure investment. We have not been getting that for a long time now but we are entitled to it. We are not going to shut up and go away with a sop, as one might throw a fist of hay to a hungry horse. We are here to stay and will reassert ourselves in Tipperary. We will have the town councils back, running them voluntarily if the Government will not agree to it. We want a fair bang for our buck as regards rates collected, property tax and taxes paid.

We welcome the foreign direct investment companies, including those up the road in Cashel and across the border in Dungarvan. They are all pharmaceutical and we are the captains of that industry, even if the Ceann Comhairle might not agree. I make that claim here today and salute those companies for their longevity. Merck has been there for more than 40 years and the other companies have been there for a long time also. We want to keep and enhance them and we want the proper infrastructure to support them. We want traffic management plans and road designs put in place. We also have a proud equine industry. Although I might be critical of it in some ways, I am very proud of it. The Members opposite might have a flutter on our horses at the weekends. In fact, they have the chance to have several flutters on several of them given the number of horses Tipperary provides.

We demand due recognition in the national framework plan, which cannot be rushed. It should go back to the drawing board to look after those people speaking for other rural areas. Rural Ireland is stagnating and we are not going to stand idly by and let it die. I could quote a former Taoiseach who said something along those lines about something in the North. I am elected by the people to fight for Tipperary. We will fight and ensure we get due recognition.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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No one would be foolish enough to think Deputy McGrath was going to shut up and go away anyway.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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He forgot about the motorways going north, east and west.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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Ar dtús, ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an Teachta Mattie McGrath faoi choinne an cuireadh go dtí Tiobraid Árann. Táim sásta é sin a dhéanamh amach anseo agus dá mbeadh aon chuidiú i leith na teanga, Gaelscoileanna ná bunscoileanna uaidh, beidh an cuidiú sin ar fáil.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Agus rince.

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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The national planning framework must include measures to minimise the effects of Brexit on communities on both sides of the Border. Border communities, including those in my own county of Donegal, are a key concern of the framework. I acknowledge the input of officials in the Department and of all local authorities along the Border who looked at this in terms of a vision and in terms of the practical and pragmatic approach to joining up infrastructure, including roads, broadband, education and health infrastructure. The Government is anxious to ensure that every aspect of the framework is fully Brexit-proofed to protect these communities and to help maintain peace and stability on the island.

With the peace process, barriers came down. We have all seen the huge benefits of that. Nevertheless, Brexit continues to raise concerns. After the Good Friday Agreement, cross-Border contacts that had been lost for generations returned. Freedom of movement of both people and goods has increased massively since the removal of checkpoints and the reopening of roads. Lives saved since the ending of violence translated to lives saved by the sharing of health care services such as the coronary and cancer care units at Altnagelvin in Derry towards which Irish taxpayers contributed upwards of €20 million to guarantee 30% bed provision for patients from County Donegal with regard to breast care. The Government supports the work of Donegal Country Council and of Derry City and Strabane District Council to create jobs on both sides of the Border. Infrastructure is vital for the north west and the Border region and the development of the A5 is the key regional priority. As the Taoiseach said recently in Derry, there is no point in just doing the A5 if we do not also include the road connections into and within Donegal, including the connections from Lifford to Letterkenny and Lifford to Sligo, with bypasses of Stranorlar and Ballybofey. With such infrastructure will come more investment in our region and more prosperity for all our citizens, developing our country and the island as a whole in a planned, structured and visionary way. That is what the national planning framework is all about.

There are still many unknowns about Brexit but we cannot allow the return of anything which prevents the free movement of goods and people across the Border. As many people in the Derry region have pointed out recently, in particular from the Foyle Port, they will not allow their businesses or their future to be defined by Brexit. We are building more bridges in education. It makes sense for our third level institutions to work together with Letterkenny IT, Ulster University at the Magee campus, and the North West Regional College collaborating across the Border. This is something I want to see happen into the future. In just over 20 years, there will be another million people on our island and we must start planning for that now. The national planning framework and capital plan are the blueprints for 8 million people living on this island by 2040. Future connections, North and South, must be taken into consideration to build a sustainable health, education, transport and economic society on the island.

Following months of public consultation, detailed discussion before the Oireachtas housing committee and extensive debate in the Chamber today, the national planning framework will allow the Government to set out a vision for the planned and structured development of the nation in the critical two decades ahead. The past can sometimes be used to define or set the parameters of where we will be in future. Past performance is sometimes used as an indicator of future performance. We had a national spatial strategy, some parts of which worked, but there is always ongoing criticism of reports and templates that they became a big noise on announcement day with the practical implementation and follow-up being suspect. A vacuum may be identified in the aftermath. There has been extensive public consultation and we are having this cross-party debate in the House. All of us are constituency representatives and we are all thinking of projects in our own constituencies. This document, however, must go wider than that and consider where people will be living and working in future, as well as the changing nature of work.

For example, we have more than 2,000 companies in the financial services sector in County Donegal. A lot of that work can be done remotely. We have a national broadband plan and people will be able to work from home. There are people from my county working in places like Singapore, New York and Dublin who will decide, if the proper infrastructure is in place, that it is time to move back. The missing piece of the roads infrastructure jigsaw on the map of the island of Ireland is the lack of access to the north west. We have great infrastructure up the M1 from Dublin Port Tunnel. We must maintain a focus on the N2 right into Monaghan and on the A5. With the help of a pragmatic approach and the making of the right decisions over the next few months, work on the A5 will start. We must then look at joining up the other bits.

My county has been in economic and political isolation for too many decades. We are enjoying a new positivity because of the Wild Atlantic Way. I meet people from the Ceann Comhairle's native county of Kildare, for example, who tell me it is their first time in Donegal and that it is a beautiful county. There were obvious reasons people did not go to Donegal in the past. We have moved on from that. We are building on the positivity and the Wild Atlantic Way. We are building on a new wave of job creation in industry that was previously restricted to a small part of our region. We know that we cannot do it in isolation as a county in future. We will continue to work with our neighbours in the Derry-Strabane council. They have a joint appreciation that Derry city is the driver and engine not only of Derry and Strabane but of the region generally, which has a population, if one includes counties Fermanagh and Tyrone, of approximately 500,000.

Future services will be dependent on critical mass and we have that in the region. If we continue to use a line on the map as the determining factor for future service provision, we will repeat the mistakes of the past. We have a wonderful opportunity in the times in which we live. We have peace, which is still fragile, and prosperity but it is still a better place than before. Now it is about a peace dividend, which means jobs and investment in order that people see a result. The way to develop the region is to build the critical infrastructure and that is why I will continue to emphasise the importance of Derry city being a key component of this framework.

I appreciate that other plans considered towns, critical mass and different gateways and hubs. They used a different language but we have a city driving the development of Donegal. There is urban sprawl into east Donegal. A total of 30% of the labour force in Seagate in Derry comes from my county, while 25% of the employees in the Foyle port company come from Donegal. It works the other way as well. Up to 15% of the staff in Pramerica in Letterkenny, whom the Minister of State has met, come from across the Border. There is a natural movement of people, which began decades ago. However, following political partition, economic isolation and neglect and political neglect down the decades, we have to face up to the reality that there is a region that has produced the blueprint for the future. The work that Derry City and Strabane District Council and Donegal County Council have done can provide the fundamental cornerstone for a better region and better way of life to attract people home and to provide solutions for the gridlock in Dublin. If the A5 is upgraded, someone could leave Dublin via the Port Tunnel and travel along the N2 and A5 to Letterkenny in two and a half hours. The critical message is we can provide a solution in the north west for much of the gridlock in this city.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Planning is fundamental to how we develop our island as we move forward. First, we must examine how Ireland has developed over the past 25 to 30 years, with continuing urbanisation and development on the east coast, in particular, in recent times. We then have to consider our natural resources in rural Ireland and how they are integrated into planning and the greater scheme of development. One of the most fundamental difficulties is it is becoming almost impossible for young people who have gone to college and worked in urban centres such as Dublin Cork, New York and Sydney and who want to return to where they are from and where their family is based to build a house in rural Ireland because of the planning restrictions on one-off houses. If the site is at the outskirts of a village, they could face charges of up to €20,000 for connections to water and sewerage schemes and development contributions. That does not encourage people to live in these communities, which have a basic infrastructure. By and large, they have excellent primary schools and excellent secondary schools, which have served the population for almost 50 years since the late 1960s and have done an impeccable job. There is a great social infrastructure comprising sporting and other facilities. There are, however, connectivity issues, primarily relating to broadband, which is as important to rural communities now as the ESB was in the 1940s and 1950s and the telephone in the 1970s and 1980s.

There is a direct contradiction in the framework document between what the authors perceive should be available and an emotional tie to the area being no longer acceptable when granting planning permission. It is beyond credibility that people can sit in an office, whether is in Cork, Dublin or Brussels, and say that housing can no longer be sustained in these communities. I recall an appearance by An Taisce representatives at a meeting of the environment committee in 2000 at which they outlined all the reasons planning permission should not be granted for one-off houses. They said everything should be built in urban settings or on the outskirts of towns and villages. Planning permission was then granted for huge developments on the outskirts of towns and villages, for which there was no demand whatsoever, between 2004 and 2007. This was the new planning regime, which resulted in ghost estates all over the place. Significant pressure was put on county councils to grant permission for one-off houses to people who were from the area and had bought sites or who were working in the area and had kids going to school there. They had to build up a raft of documentation as the planning application when through the system. As one-off houses were built and the people who lived in them had families, they became embedded in their communities and they have contributed extremely well to them, whereas the those living on the estates that have been built at the edges of towns and villages are isolated and segregated from their communities. There is no proper integration whatsoever. It is the same as when west Dublin and Ballymun were developed and slums in Dublin city were cleared out in the 1960s.

We are creating issues for the future and the nonsense in this document about one-off housing is absolutely crazy. I do not know what the bureaucrats and An Taisce and the other fine bodies are thinking because they are not connected to rural communities. If we were to have a serious chat with ourselves, we would have to make it more acceptable to grant planning permission for such houses and we would have to make it easier for couples to secure permission and to integrate with communities. If we go down the economic route and say that everything has to be based on critical mass and economics in cities, it will be like Dublin. The city has expanded at an alarming rate and that has hollowed out towns such as Carlow, situated an hour's drive from here, because people are pulled towards Dublin. Will villages and small towns be hollowed out in County Cork to create a critical mass in Cork city?

There is also a social aspect to planning. As families grow, grandparents help out and family support is available if there is a crisis. No path ever runs smooth and help and support is sometimes needed. I know of families who have moved to Dublin and if one of the children is sick, the grandparents travel up from the country by train in order to help out. There is no other way because the two parents are working. That is not sustainable. The document before us is flawed in its interpretation of what has happened at European level. It is absolutely flawed to think that we cannot have one-off housing.

3 o’clock

The treatment plants that are out there are far better than the treatment plants in small towns and villages. We saw the report earlier this week in terms of the pollution that has been caused. They are putting down their own wells and are not a burden on the State in any way, shape or form. It is almost as if we have to close down every village and national school and move on. However, in 50 years' time, whoever will be here will be debating why this policy was pursued and the thinking behind it.

We have seen in the marginal parts of this country that land and community abandonment are real factors. Two hours were allowed for this debate, which is as fundamental as the debate on the Finance Bill or any other issue being debated in this House at this time. It is fundamental to how we will order our society over the next 25 years or 30 years. The policies that have been pursued by environmentalists, those in the Custom House and others in terms of centralising the population is not working and is bad for society in the long run. Consider the enormous daily cost to the State associated with the development of Limerick and west Dublin over the past 40 years or 50 years. If we are to continue with this and say that there is to be no more once-off houses in the country, I firmly believe that we will rue the day and environmentalists, when they will have done a complete about-turn on their nonsensical policies, and planners will come back and say it was a folly. We are leaving behind a good, integrated social infrastructure. We will not have all the same age group in the one estate. We will have people of all age groups, as well as help, support and commitment, which is how the community should be defined. Communities should be defined in terms of how they support their people.

In whatever we do and in terms of our contributions to this debate, we have to appreciate and support what we have. We must encourage people because people will live in rural parts of Ireland. I said last night during the debate on the Finance Bill that there are many fine jobs in rural parts of Ireland. Small and large companies have built up significant employment and given social cohesion to communities. That is readily available if the people who are extremely well-educated by our education system are encouraged in some small way and the blocks are taken away and they are helped to build their own houses, rather than having the absolute nonsense and bureaucratic bullshit that is going on at the moment.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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The language, a Cheann Comhairle.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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An Teachta Peadar Tóibín, le do thoil.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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Rural parts of Ireland are in serious trouble. In many ways, we have a two-tier economy and society. We have been rudderless since 2002 without a spatial plan. Most of the economic activity is concentrating on the mid-east and greater Dublin region. Comparatively speaking, Dublin's dominance is significantly out of kilter. Its dominance economically and population-wise would be three or four times the dominance of London in Britain, for example. There is a significant danger that we are moving towards a city state, where more than 50% of the economic activity, taxes paid and population will be located in a small area. That city state will be surrounded by a national park of emptiness where, except for a few small perhaps regionally important urban areas, there will be no driving energy or critical mass to re-balance that lack of kilter. There will be no critical mass for cities to be able to attract investment or compete on an international basis. That is what has been missing from Government policy over the past number of years.

Teagasc has carried out research and identified that currently, only 37% of farmers in this State are independently economically viable. That is phenomenal. There are only approximately 140,000 farmers in the State and only a small cohort of them are making enough money to feed their family and pay their way themselves. We also have a major problem with energy in this country but we have not yet put the two issues together. For example, the importation every year by Bord na Móna of biomass worth millions of euro that could be produced here is a major mistake. The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, has not produced a feed-in tariff yet for farmers in rural parts of Ireland to produce small-scale solar, wind or bio-digesters and put energy into the system, reduce exports of fossil fuels and add money into their own pockets. It is unbelievable how slow the Government is. Most European countries did this ages ago. If up in the North four of five years ago, one would have seen solar panels on the roofs of houses that were feeding into the system and allowing people to contribute.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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It did not work particularly well in the North.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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The feed-in tariffs allowed people to bring energy into the system in the North of Ireland, but the Minister of State is right in that there has been corruption in the North with regard to the renewable heating scheme, which is why we have taken that issue so seriously.

The spatial imbalance has been added to by the Government's onslaught on services in regional and rural parts of Ireland, with 500 post offices now being described as economically unsustainable and with the closure of 139 Garda stations. I met the regulator of the credit unions, which are being prevented from functioning as a growing banking system in this economy. The Government is involved in a whole range of brakes on the development of rural parts of Ireland. For instance, in parts of the country broadband speeds are 36 times slower than those in parts of Dublin. If anyone is looking to do any business these days, they need broadband. However, we will not have broadband in many of these places until 2022 or 2023. The Government needs to get interim solutions to those broadband crises as well.

One of my major problems with the Government's focus on regional and rural development is the ignoring of the Six Counties. The Border runs for 499 km in mostly rural parts of Ireland but there is little mention of the North of Ireland in the strategic plans of this Government. The same applies with regard to the South of Ireland in the North's plans. In that area, the development of 11 counties is enmeshed. They are interdependent and that needs to be focused on.

IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland have a really poor record in the development of jobs outside of Dublin. Since Fine Gael came into office, at least 70% of IDA Ireland investment has gone to the Dublin or Cork areas. Those statistics belie any shaking of heads. More is going in now due to the super-inflation that exists in Dublin with regard to office space and accommodation space. It is more out of default that this is happening. This critique is not to say that Dublin does not need development. Of course it needs development, but the Government's rudderless spatial plan so far has led to overheating in areas of Dublin.

Two important things need to happen. Representatives of the NTA attended my committee recently and I asked them the basis on which they invested in transport services. They said that they invest on the basis of demand, which sounds logical. Demand needs to be met. However, we are not going to change the spatial imbalance in the country by focusing on demand only. If we want to disrupt the trends, when investing we must have regard to future demands and not just existing demand. In other words, if we want to build a critical mass that will create balance and draw from Dublin, we need to invest more per capitain certain locations in the State but that has not happened.

County Meath is a great county but it has suffered significantly due to the lack of spatial planning over the past 20 years. It has basically become a dormitory county with a population that is increasing rapidly.

The number of people living in the county will increase from 200,000 to approximately 250,000 within 20 years. This increase is creating severe pressure on housing. There are approximately 4,000 people on the housing waiting list in County Meath, yet there are approximately 5,000 empty houses in the county. Despite rents increasing at one of the fastest rates in the country, rent caps have not been applied to any part of my constituency of Meath West.

County Meath has a disproportionately young population, with an average age lower than the national average. Funding for youth services is poor, however, with the county receiving only €2.89 per child from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, as opposed to an average national payment of €22.31 per child. Meath County Council has the lowest income, expenditure and number of staff per capita of all local authorities. Until the Government commits to providing the county council with the resources required to bring its funding up to the national average, the county will continue to have major problems.

To give another example of the role of Departments run by Fine Gael Ministers, the average payment nationally from private housing grants is €8 per capita, whereas the corresponding figure in County Meath is €3 per capitaand the highest average payment in the country is €17 per capita. County Meath has the lowest number of gardaí per capitain the State, which is one of the reasons we have a spate of crime in the county and its major towns have daytime drug dealing and drug use in their centres. Approximately 40% of the population of the county shop elsewhere. This is one of the highest figures for retail leakage in the country. County Meath is also a net contributor to the State, providing 3.4% of taxes and receiving only 2.7% of expenditure. It is also the most heavily tolled county in the State.

One of the reasons for all of this is that County Meath, like County Kildare, has a burgeoning population and Government spending is not keeping pace with population growth. While Kildare, Louth and Wicklow are comparable counties, they attract much more investment through IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland than County Meath. As a result, economic stability in the county has declined significantly in recent years and it has fallen down the affluence table.

People in County Meath, with its large population, commute further than people in any other county owing to a lack of jobs and transport infrastructure locally. This morning, the majority of people in the county who went to work left the county. In no other local authority area in the State do most workers leave the county to work.

The Government must, in its spatial strategy, not only balance east and west and disrupt current trends, but also ensure counties such as Meath are not left behind in terms of investment. The Government's plans do not envisage a rail line to Navan, the largest town in the country without a rail service. Navan is also in the county with the largest number of commuters who also commute further than people in all other counties. People travelling into Dublin meet traffic jams on the Meath side of the Dublin-Meath border and as far west as four, five or six miles outside Blanchardstown. This is because Fine Gael made a decision to reduce capital expenditure. Ireland is second from the bottom of the European Union league table for capital expenditure, spending more than only Romania.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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We have to consider some facts. Some 2.7 million of the State's population of 4.7 million live in Leinster and the move towards the east coast has been astonishing. I drove from Wexford to Dublin this morning. The Ceann Comhairle is from a county adjacent to Dublin and my neck of the woods is also close to the capital.

A person from my locality needs to be on the motorway at 6.05 a.m. in order to get to Dublin - 60 miles away - for 7.45 a.m. That is the length of time it is taking because of the volume of traffic. We cannot keep having people driving into Dublin city because it is unable to accommodate that number of cars.

I wish to place on record the fact that, since I became Minister of State with responsibility for financial services, I have promoted rural and regional Ireland every time I meet the representatives of companies. I tell companies that there is a terrific service and product available outside Dublin. While companies have different views and criteria, they are now looking outside Dublin in a much more positive way than was the case in the past. I have used Pramerica in Letterkenny as a really good example in this regard. Letterkenny is a medium-sized town of 20,000 people but it has Pramerica, a company with a staff of 1,500, and another company, Optimus, which has a staff of 1,000. There are 2,500 employees in the financial services sector in a medium-sized town and there is the capacity and ability to continue that service. It is very important that we continue to promote rural and regional Ireland.

The construction of the M20 is crucial. We must link Limerick and Cork. This will be the first time that we link two cities for quite some time. In every other instance where such a link was being created, it involved Dublin city and some other location. This is the first time Limerick and Cork will be linked by a motorway.

It galls me somewhat when people in this House say that rural Ireland is dead. Rural Ireland is not dead. There are some areas that are experiencing depopulation and other challenges but other areas are thriving. Letterkenny is the best example. It is a thriving medium-sized rural town four hours from here. There are many Letterkennys all over the country, including Gorey, the town in which I live. Gorey is thriving. It has a massive retail centre and a population of 10,000. Rural Ireland is not dead but we must ensure that there are sufficient economic growth centres in every county or region so that the spin-off from these will help the areas that are falling backwards. Killorglin is a small town in County Kerry with a population of fewer than 5,000. A company called FEXCO, which employs 1,000 staff, is located there. That is the future. It involves attracting companies that are large enough to have a huge impact on a region and I am committed to ensuring that this happens.

The challenge for Kildare, Meath, about which Deputy Tóibín spoke, and where I live in north County Wexford is ensuring that the capital does not become all-consuming, thereby obliging the people in the areas to which I refer all have to work in Dublin. They do not have to do so. People can commute in the opposite direction rather than all driving their cars into the city.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I fully support putting in place a national planning strategy with which counties and regions must comply. As has been mentioned already, the way planning has gone in County Meath over the past 20 or 30 years has been nothing short of outrageous. Some people lobbied on behalf of towns to try to expand them in order that they reach their full potential, as I heard one person say in respect of a particular village. What has happened in Meath is that we now have wonderful towns. However, very few of the new towns in the Meath East constituency are of sufficient size to ensure that one can have all of the necessary facilities in place. If Meath County Council wanted to put a swimming pool somewhere in the area comprising Ashbourne, Ratoath, Dunshauglin and Dunboyne, there is no one town that can say it has the population to sustain it. It must be shared between the various towns because they have been allowed to grow near enough to each other and, in some cases, at similar rates. We must call a halt to this. As the Minister of State said with regard to commuting times, commuting times just keep going up and people are suffering much more hassle on the roads every day when travelling to Dublin from my constituency. Not enough jobs are being located in the suburbs. In some cases, we will have to upgrade roads. We certainly have to upgrade the N2 for safety reasons and because it just cannot hold the traffic that is already there. There is no question about that. However, if planning is continue the way it has operated in County Meath over many years, it simply will not be sustainable. We will not be able to deliver the jobs, services or transport infrastructure people want. We really have to call a halt in respect of what has gone on up to now.

My biggest issue with any kind of planning strategy or framework is that the public needs to be involved from day one because, generally, the public was not on board with the vast majority of development plans or the expansion of towns, villages and seaside resorts that occurred in the past 20 or 25 years. Effectively, members of the public were left out of the loop. I saw a recent example of this two years ago when a footnote appeared in one particular variation of a development plan to state that it was envisaged that Stamullen might increase in size to become a moderately sustainable town. In other words, it might grow to three times its size. This was simply a footnote in a variation of a development plan. That would not have the effect of doing that. The residents did not know that this was being planned for their area. This needs to stop and we must involve not just the Dáil but also all the people in our communities, right down to the grass roots, in what is happening.

In light of what is contained in planning framework, some of the development in my constituency will have to be brought to a halt if the framework is to succeed. I do not know if the message will get through to county councils, councillors and other interested parties that, put simply, some towns will remain as they are - and that this would be in the best interests of planning for those towns and the region - while others will expand massively. I think that will have to happen as well but as long as the public is involved, it may not be a problem. If members of the public are confident that transport, infrastructure and other services will be delivered, then they will come on board.

This demands a new realisation. We must view this from a national perspective. There is no point in Meath County Council deciding that Stamullen needs to expand massively - and not informing the residents of the town - while Balbriggan, which is almost next door, is on some different track or path. That cannot be allowed to happen any more. It must be done nationally and regionally and I will support that all the way because we need services, roads, infrastructure, broadband and sports fields. These are ongoing issues affecting all of the towns and villages in my constituency, in which there is a severe lack of services and facilities because of the amount of housing that is being built. We need to stop this approach to planning. Planning must be strategic in nature and it must proceed on the basis of catering for communities rather than just involving the construction of housing.

Deputy O'Dowd spoke about Drogheda, which is an interesting case because it is like many towns situated on the borders of counties. I will not blame the Minister of State, Deputy English, for this because he was not really on board with it at all but the previous Government proposed a change in the boundary between Louth and Meath. That was a simple change which meant absolutely nothing in terms of forward planning for the entire region. A lot more could be done through co-operation between counties. Two counties with a town on the border between them should be made to work much closely to develop strategies for that town. I hope that under the national planning framework and the regionalisation of planning, this would be essential so that one county will not be able to do something on one side without the active involvement of the adjoining county for the good of all citizens of the region.

In truth, we are catching up following the bad planning of the past. Many things that County Meath needs will be required regardless of whether we expand so we need the upgrade of the N2 to make it safer. We think of the person who died this week but quite a number of people have died on that road this year. Action is required in respect of N2 but this must reflect the needs of commuters who experience continuous delays on the road.

There is a need for the Navan rail line to service Dunshaughlin. There is also a need for those responsible for planning public transport and rail lines to actually use rail and bus transport in order that they might know what they are talking about.

The station originally proposed for Dunshaughlin was somewhere way outside the town, which would be absolutely useless to anybody. We have to get a realistic plan back on track. We also have to look at how we can serve Ratoath or Ashbourne with that rail line leading down to Dunboyne and back into the city.

The truth is a lot of people like to live beside capital cities and a lot of companies like to move and employ people beside or in capital cities. It is a reality that is reflected in the plan because it provides for a substantial increase in population in the mid-east region. It is right that the plan also seeks to disperse population around the country. That is essential. We are facing a huge increase, even in the mid-east and even with this national plan. It must be done properly. It must be done with communities in mind and with the consent of the public on the ground. I urge county councils and regional authorities, when this starts filtering down - and it needs to filter down as soon as possible when the plan is complete - to involve communities and get their consent. The Government should make it a key priority of the national planning framework that the public is on board and involved all the time.

We also need to consider an issue that many of my colleagues have raised. There is a lot of concern about rural areas and how they could lose out. We are not a completely urbanised society. We are to some extent but there are rural populations and towns that need to see the benefit of development. Deputy Michael Moynihan was very critical of the plan. I imagine people in Cork North-West would only be too delighted for a bit of development. We should think carefully about it and do it properly. I am sure they would like to do it properly and carefully too in Cork North-West. Rural areas want development. There are rural areas in my constituency that need some sort of help in terms of planning. I do not want to see the whole concept of rural houses stopped by this plan. There is certainly language in the plan that causes worry to planners. There must also be scope for allowing people to build one-off houses on the edge of villages. It needs to be looked at more closely because it makes sense for everybody. It makes sense for the people who want to live in a rural area but it also makes sense that the village would be able to incorporate these people and the services would be easy to avail of. It is something we have not looked at. We have the grade system that was in vogue a few years ago. We need to bring it back and encourage more rural houses - if people from such areas want to build them - around our villages and integrate them into the villages as best we can while not stopping people building on their own family land. That is a fundamental principle that must be maintained.

People do not need to build absolutely massive houses in rural areas. Some people build very big houses and that is their entitlement once it is in accordance with the planning and development plan. Other people want to build smaller houses. I was talking to a constituent who has moved to the Minister of State's parish. He has built an average size house, which is very unusual in rural areas at the moment. It is a really interesting concept because people can expand in the future if they need to. We need more of that. There are rural people put off from building in the countryside because there is an expectation that the house must be to a certain size when that may not be needed. There may be some cases particularly with families where semi-detached houses in rural areas could work really well. There are lots of examples in the North of Ireland. We need to encourage it if we are to give people, who may not be able to get a mortgage for very large houses, which have become de rigueurin rural Ireland, the opportunity to continue living in their own area. We must also not forget the rural cottage scheme which is a very useful scheme to keep people in rural areas. In urban areas we need to keep the planning with the consent of the public, do it properly and put the emphasis on communities and economic development. We cannot forget rural areas, however. We need to make sure those rural areas are allowed to thrive and survive.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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We all agree regional planning is of the utmost importance. It has become more and more important as time goes by. It is true the country has developed in a haphazard way with Dublin spreading out gradually into the country so much that perhaps in 100 years' time it will have spread to the rest of the country. We have to counter that. I agree entirely with the people who have already said that. We can do it in a positive or negative way. There are some people who say our population is getting too big and that it will increase by a certain amount. That is to our advantage. It is beneficial because the more people we have in the country the more economies of scale we can avail of. Incidentally, in case we need to be reminded, countries such as Belgium and Holland, which are roughly one quarter or one third our size have three and five times the population, which says something about how one can deal with these things. We have a number of sacred cows we have to confront. One of the things we have to do is seriously consider investment outside of the greater Dublin area and in close proximity to some of the larger cities, in the midlands and along the western seaboard, right from north to south. If that is done over a period of time it will eventually level off the kind of development we have seen taking place already. It will create an economic pull on the other side of the country and we will see an equalisation of development in a way that is beneficial to the people who are living there now and future generations.

Much has been said about rural life. I have said it many times in the past. Our planning policy has to look carefully at development in rural Ireland. Looking at schools is the classic way of finding out where we are going. Are the schools having difficulty staying open? Why are they not staying open? It is because the population is not sufficient to require it. Why is there not sufficient population to require it? It is because the local authorities do not want to give planning permission in rural Ireland. There is no reason in the wide earthly world why we cannot have development of the indigenous rural populations in line with good planning, unlike in the UK where such populations have completely shrunk and moved away. In the UK, the only people in rural areas, apart from those who live in very big houses, are those in holiday homes. Such a situation is developing in this country as well. We need to encourage indigenous populations to remain in their own areas in concert with good planning. That can be done. Professor Caulfield in Galway has been promoting the idea for years.

The dirt and air interpretation of good planning would say it is a great thing to see the side of a hill at night with no lights. The people who live in that part of the country know the opposite. They think it is a great thing to see the side of a hill at night with lights. In every other country in the world that is what one sees. For some unknown reason, our planners have pursued the opposite line, which means the population drifts away. We also need to remember that we have a tradition of mass emigration from counties in the midlands, along the western seaboard and the south. As a result of that there is a need to replenish the population and counter the drift away from those areas. We could throw up our hands and say we cannot do anything about this but we can. I will take Carrick-on-Shannon, where 20 years ago there was very little going on, as an example. I used to visit it occasionally on Sundays and there was very little happening in it. Two major employers then appeared on the scene, one in the wood fabrication area and the other in the banking area, and it made a huge difference. One cannot cross the street on a Sunday afternoon now because the traffic is so busy. There is business, population growth, economic activity, commercial activity and things are happening. That is what helps to promote and develop an area. It brings people into the area and it gives people employment and quality of life. That is just one example. There needs to be many more such examples along the western seaboard. I spent a bit of time down there during the summer and in Sligo, Fermanagh and Donegal. It is interesting to look at now and again. We all need to do it and we, as legislators, should do it.

The other thing that has become obvious is the question about infrastructure. We have choices. We can have free water. It is a great ideological idea but if we do that, we will miss out on some other investment in infrastructure. Water and wastewater services, roads, telecommunications, rail services, recreational facilities and health and education services are the bedrock of the areas of this country that need development. We must make decisions some time in the future. It is all very fine to seize political opportunities. They arise on a regular basis and we go down a particular road for parochial reasons. That is grand. It meets a purpose at the time but if we keep going on like that, in 25 years' time we will still be talking about the same things in this House and they will still need to be done.

There were 9 million people in the country in the 1840s.

The population of the island is at its highest since then. There have been improvements and positive action has been taken, but more needs to be done. We need to encourage foreign direct investment and indigenous investment in growth centres along the western seaboard and the midlands. We need to develop the facilities that are available to develop, as has been done in other parts of Europe and elsewhere.

We need to be watchful about some of the thinking in Europe regarding what is known now as the Apple tax. Some countries see a great opportunity of curtailing Ireland's economic activity, but for what reason? Of course, there is a simple reason. They want more foreign direct investment in their own bailiwick - in their own backyard. We are in competition with all of those countries. It is sad that many people in this country see the so-called Apple tax as a great opportunity for Ireland to get a windfall. There are no such windfalls around. The simple fact is that this is a great opportunity for other countries to encourage foreign direct investment into their particular jurisdictions without having to tax anything earned in those jurisdictions and to hand it over to us. I want to mention this in particular regarding regional development. If Ireland is forced into that situation, we have a serious problem on our hands. Some think that is a victory; it is not a victory. It is a serious issue that will have a huge impact and will curtail our activity, development, growth and advancement for the next 50 years. Suffice it to say that I do not think it would be a good idea.

One needs more time than I have to cover a subject of this nature. If we play our cards well and avail of the opportunities that are available and appear before us, we can take long-term planning decisions that are in the interests of the country at the time they are needed. We need to avoid quick-flip decisions to gain a short-term advantage and think about the expanding population. The expanding population should not be seen as a threat and rather should be seen as a great advantage. There is no reason the country could not facilitate 10 million people. We have developed this is crazy nonsense over the years. We draw upon ourselves the notion of being downtrodden and becoming more downtrodden on the basis that if we keep saying the same thing people will have pity for us. There is no such thing. We live in a competitive world and we should bear that in mind.

My last point relates to the things we do ourselves. While this issue does not affect my constituency, it affects the country. I know a decision is about to be made either today or within the next week or so on a foreign direct investment project in the Galway region. Various people objected to it, which is fair enough. They have a right to object, but it is not a requirement; it is not mandatory to object. People do not seem to understand the difference. It is not mandatory. If we have an opportunity to create jobs in any part of the country, we should have a system that deals with the objections raised much quicker than at present. We need to be able to illustrate to those considering investment in jobs in the various regions that we can have a decision fairly quickly - at least comparable to the speed of those decisions taken in other jurisdictions that are competing with us. That is the amazing part of it; they are competing with us. We would then be able to say that we are working on an even keel and a level playing pitch and be able to compete with anybody.

I hope the Minister will try to put the positives together and avoid the negatives. We need to try to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes we made in the past and that we do not get involved in a welter of negativity and olagón that used to prevail in this country once upon a time. We have proved during the Celtic tiger that we could do things that were not possible previously. We may have done things wrong and may have done some daft things, but at least we proved we could do them right if we wanted to. Let us continue to do that.

Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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I am grateful for this opportunity. I was starting to worry that we would not have it. While I am not sure if it was by design, when the draft was published a few weeks ago, there was not a word about it. There was no national call that I could see to analyse the draft that was published and make sure people made submissions by 3 November. I am pleased the Government has given us this opportunity. I submitted a 5,000-word submission. It is not that I think I have exclusivity on the best way to move forward, but I have suggestions. It is fair to say that none of those suggestions made their way into the draft plan and I wonder if anybody else's did. I read all of the available pre-consultative-phase documentation related to the national planning framework. The draft is remarkably similar. It makes me feel that it was written already and we are just going through the motions now and will do what we want.

I was involved in the chamber of commerce network in drawing up submissions for the consultation phase of what was then the national spatial strategy. Of course, the major mistake before we even started was that we got it back to front. We had the national development plan followed by the national spatial strategy. At least we are approaching this correctly from a chronological point of view.

I am not encouraged by what I see in the plan. I know many people spent a considerable amount of time working on it, but I believe it will preserve the status quo. I fear we will do exactly what Deputy Durkan hoped we would not do, meaning that whoever is in these seats in 25 years will again be considering how to deal with the very same problems, except worse, that we are dealing with here today. This is the exacerbation of the eastern conurbation for want of a better expression, including Deputy Durkan's county and that of Deputy Thomas Byrne, who already highlighted some of the issues here, and ignoring areas where there is capacity.

I often use the following analogy. If Ireland were a shell and core unit of 10,000 sq. ft., we have only chosen to use and have serviced about 7,000 sq. ft. of it. Therefore, our output is limited to that space. Equally, we have done this in a planning context. With the virtual border that exists north of the Dublin-Galway line and perhaps west of Mullingar, that section of the country, with about 30% of the landmass, about 400,000 people and a great amount of capacity, is largely being ignored. No party or government since the foundation of the State is without blame in this regard; in fact they all share blame in not taking a strategic approach. They have regarded the north west of the country as a pain in the national side and thrown it an odd bone of placation from time to time depending on who happened to be influential in their party or in a senior position whereby a project would be undertaken to address a certain road, hospital or school. There is has been no strategic approach to open up that third of the country.

I am not advocating for the Sligo Olympic bid, nor am I advocating for us to build the Mayo Clinic at every crossroads, but it is foolish in the extreme - sadly, the draft plan does nothing to change my view - that we are choosing to ignore at least 30% of our capacity as we look to the next 20 years. Huge challenges are there. All the indications are of a population increase of 600,000 or 700,000 and all the challenges and difficulties that would present.

We need to consider alternatives to preserving the status quo. There are some givens. Dublin is the national driver and it is vital that it can thrive. It is bursting at the seams at the moment. It badly needs its outer orbital route, the metro and numerous other things in order for it to maintain its position and be able to be a national economic driver. Equally Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway need to be resourced. Each of these cities has its own challenges at the moment. Galway is a beautiful place and everybody loves it. It is thriving and alive, but it is strangled with traffic. We need to open up that 30% and put the infrastructure in place to allow us to perform to our potential.

To do that, the region needs a driver, and, obviously, I will focus on the north west. The Government needs to choose a location for that and I might have my own view on that. From reading the plan, there is a reference in section 3.3 on page 44 to the regional drivers north of Galway city being Derry city. As much as I want to see a united Ireland - and would do almost anything to see it achieved - in the absence of the Northern Ireland Executive, which I hope will be back in action soon, the responsibility for Derry city is in Whitehall and London with the Tory party. Are we implementing a plan for the next 20 years for the Republic of Ireland and taking refuge in what is going on in Derry? We are blind. If the Government wants to open up that region, three road links are required. One is a motorway linking from the M1 through Tyrone over to Letterkenny and Derry. Another is a motorway on the M4 opening all of that end of the country. The other critically important one is an M17 to give Galway city the benefit of Ireland West Airport Knock and to open up the entire north-west region to the benefit of that. Then we would begin to put a region to work for itself. There is plenty of ingenuity among people to make that region into a genuine contributor rather than it being seen, by consecutive Governments of whatever colour, as a drain on national resources. This plan lacks that vision. It is more of the same. It is underpinning the status quo, whereby we will stuff 700,000 additional people into the existing primary and secondary cities with nothing in the north west, which we hope to preserve as a weekend retreat for those people in search of Peig Sayers looking out over a half door smoking a pipe and having a pint of Guinness, but that represents a poor use of our resources. There is nothing in the plan to provide that we would open up that 30% of the shell and core unit, increase our national output, perform to our potential and have the whole nation contributing, rather than this area been seen as a drain. I will have much more in my submission which I do not have the time to go into today.

In terms of planning locally and the issue of rural planning - Deputy Thomas Byrne touched on this earlier - we have a tradition where people live and work in the countryside. We have contradictory situations in which An Bord Pleanála is blocking rural enterprise and rural housing while at the same time, other arms of the State are trying to promote that. The Government cannot have it both ways. Deputy Durkan mentioned that we had a population of 8 million people back in 1840s. That is true. County Sligo, for example, had a population of approximately 185,000. Does the Minister of State know how many of those people lived in what we know today as Sligo town? The figure is 7,000. We have a tradition where people work and live in the rural economy and whether the Government likes it or not we have to facilitate that and we should seek to do that.

I am not talking about a hospital consultant or somebody who is from a town, like myself, going out and building a trophy home with a view of the lake or the sea or the mountain. I am talking about people from such areas and, as was touched on by Deputy Durkan, the repopulating of those areas. How many ruins of derelict cottages that were once the homes of those 188,000 people in Sligo remain? They are still there. Why can we not put homes back there? The way wastewater treatment has gone is infinitely better today than it was even ten years ago and we should seek to promote that. Equally, we want to promote more forms of sustainable living and attract people into towns. There are two things the Minister of State needs to do about that. First, there is the idea of Part V provision and full integration in a town in order to have the appropriate mix of social and affordable housing, as well as private housing. That is great and very honourable but the sad reality is that we are not dealing with a blank canvass. The average nationally in this respect is approximately 14% of social housing, whereas in Sligo, Limerick and Cork, the figure is over 30%. There is an issue in those three locations where we need to attract in more private housing to complement the balance. We will not do that unless we attract in people. For senior citizens in particular, and as I age myself I can see the benefit in this, why are we not incentivising the construction of apartment blocks with a 24-hour concierge service? We could tell people that if they live in a town, we would waive their property tax and that the State would provide free broadband and free services to encourage people to move to live in towns, particularly older people who would like to have the shop, the general practitioner, the pharmacy and so on their doorstep. If we do not do that, it is going to continue the way it is. However, we must also be cognisant of preserving our culture, whereby people live in rural Ireland. We should not pander to the minorities, hiding behind measures such as the Water Framework Directive or other such measures. We should look for innovative solutions so that we can preserve and promote that culture. I will leave it at that and I hope we will have other opportunities to discuss this.

Clearly a great deal of work has gone into this planning framework. It is not all a waste. It certainly is not. However, if one dreams, one should dream big. This is not a strategic vision for the next 20 years. It is one that is preparing us to stand still but we need to be prepared to push the boat out.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Tá mé sásta go bhfuil deis agam páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht seo ar ábhar an-tábhachtach. Sílim gurb é seo an cáipéis is tábhachtaí a tháinig os ár gcomhair le cúpla mí anuas. Tá píosa beag bídeach - deich líne nó mar sin - faoin dteideal "Gaeltacht areas" ar leathanach 82 den caipéis seo. Is é sin an méid cur síos ar theanga oifigiúil na tíre seo atá sa cháipéis. Ní mór dom aird an Aire a tharraingt ar sin agus a rá leis gur mhasla é don teanga ar a lán leibhéil, ina measc tábhacht na teanga í féin. Níos mó ná sin, tá tábhacht ag an teanga ó thaobh cúrsaí eacnamaíochta de. Iarraim ar an Aire dul ar ais agus breathnú ar sin. Ba cheart go mbeadh caibidil de leathanach, ar a laghad, sa cáipéis seo faoi teanga naisiúnta na tíre seo agus an tábhacht a bhaineann léi.

I have eight and a half minutes remaining, having begun my contribution in Irish. I welcome this document. It replaces the national spatial strategy, which as the previous speaker said came after the national plan. That national spatial strategy was focused on cities and towns and, as the Minister of State's draft document points out, there were winners and losers. It was not an inclusive document that looked at developing the country in a sustainable way not only in Dublin but across the regions. The previous plan also was not based on any statutory footing and there was no investment plan. I welcome those positive changes and the attempt to look at the country on a more long-term basis. There are many positives in this document. One could not find fault with a substantial amount of it in terms the positive language used in it and what it aspires to achieve. The word "sustainable" is used throughout the document.

However, I have heard Deputies speak earlier about people objecting and that people must become involved. My experience in my time as a local councillor and as a Member of this House is that people need to be heard. The people of Galway, not me, and I have repeated this ad nauseam, led the way in recycling, and we followed. The people of Galway forced the people to listen. My experience, therefore, is not one of people objecting. My experience is that of active citizens wanting to participate, and they see the problems quicker than we do. On the ground in Galway, we are constantly facing flooding, the effects of climate change and so on and I would like to put aside the myth that people object. People are not being heard.

I dealt with the Gaeltacht. If we look at Galway, interestingly, they have picked a case study of Letterfrack on page 72, with which I am delighted. It states: "Based in Letterfrack ... and established in 1971, Connemara West plc is a rural community development organisation that has created and delivered innovative rural development initiatives" and so on. It is wonderful to see that included in the plan. That organisation on the ground is struggling to get the ear of a Minister.

4 o’clock

They want to expand and to bring in more American students and colleges but they are struggling to get the ear of the relevant Minister. I know that has been going on for the last six months. It is great that it is in but let us have some action on the ground.

Galway city is a case where the dream and the reality can be contrasted. Currently, it has a population of 80,000 and three third level institutions. Its population swells to well over 100,000 with students and tourists. The prediction is that it will rise to 124,000 by 2040, which is 22 or 23 years away. Pages 58 and 59 of the framework document list key future growth enablers for Galway. It has been said that Galway is choking with traffic. It certainly has a traffic problem, which is the result of a complete lack of vision by city management, the IDA - I will come back to that point - and successive Governments failing to take a hands-on approach to the city. I am a proud Galwegian. It is a marvellous city and I invite everybody to visit. The problems that have been created could have been avoided and can still be resolved. Various chapters of the framework document address light rail, particularly for Dublin. Galway is crying out for a light rail solution. We have had presentations on it at council level from a number of people on a committee, including businesspeople and others who have worked in Galway and know the problems. The proposal is being ignored by management in Galway, by the vast majority of politicians on the ground and by the Government. If I had the Minister of State's ear today, I would say to him that if he is really serious about sustainable development and embracing population change - as I am - he should consider Galway as a city for light rail. It could help balance the rate of development between Dublin, which is out all proportion to the rest of the country, and Galway. Galway could happily grow into a city of 150,000 with proper planning.

This leads me to the issue of planning in Galway. We have prime sites. We have Ceannt Station with 14 acres of land in the middle of the city. Besides that we have the docks with I forget how many acres. However, there is no master plan. Ceannt Station is going ahead with its own plan which, I might add, is developer led. The docks are also developer led and there is also a separate development on the Headford Road. There is no overall master plan from the local authority. There is no city architect leading it. It is vital that the Government take a hands-on approach to this. On top of that we have an airport that was bought and that is no longer functioning, where there are 114 acres. All of these sites are crucial to the future sustainable development of the city.

The developer-driven plans have an emphasis on office space to the detriment of housing units. I have repeatedly said that we have a housing crisis in Galway. There are at least 13,000 people on a waiting list since 2002. They cannot access a home nor a house on the private market, under the housing assistance payment scheme, HAP, or under the city council. The city council stopped building in 2009 and is only building 14 houses this year. I am using my time to highlight the opportunities in Galway and to warn against the repetition of past mistakes in respect of developer-led development without vision, without a master plan and without an integrated solution that would allow for housing, business and light rail.

The IDA has played a Trojan part in bringing employment and jobs to Galway, as I have said at the Committee of Public Accounts. However, it has done so on a single site, which has created huge traffic problems and left the city council struggling. In addition, there is no park-and-ride facility in Galway although it has been on the city development plan since 2005. It has never been implemented. There are sustainable solutions in Galway. It is an example of a city that should be looked at as a model if we are seriously interested in sustainable development.

In the minute I have left I would like to point to the absence of any policy in the framework document on the islands of our country. There is absolutely no mention of them. Our islands are gallantly struggling to survive through co-operatives and various organisations. Generally I welcome the vision in the document. It is the operation on the ground that is in question, and the fact that the damage will be done before we ever get to implement this. There is a lack of items in the plan in respect of the Gaeltacht and the Irish language, and absolutely no policy on the islands. I am sure we will have another chance to discuss this when the plan comes out.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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Ireland 2040 plans for where we will be about 22 years from now. As Deputy Connolly has said, there is much in the document to be welcomed. There is much in it that is very aspirational, that is very good and that we want to see happen. An awful lot of it is very vague, however. That is one of the problems I have with it. I am thinking of the sections on agriculture, forestry, tourism and all of that for rural Ireland. There is an absence of vision for people to be able to live long lives in rural Ireland. That is what is needed if we are to regenerate the regions and rural Ireland.

Agriculture has been the backbone because it is where productivity comes from. It is where the money is made that is spent in the local communities and areas. In most parts of my constituency where we are talking about suckler cows and sheep, the farmers are making very little money to spend anywhere. That is the problem we have. In general, they are depending on the cheque coming from Europe to sustain themselves, their livelihoods and the entire livelihoods of everyone who lives around them as well. There needs to be a re-focus on what we are going to do for the farming sector to ensure that it is viable into the future, and how it can be done in a way that will work for people living on marginal land mainly in smallholdings which are family farms. They are a unique asset of ours when it comes to marketing our produce and ourselves as a nation.

The other issue is rural decline and depopulation. Yesterday evening at 8 o'clock, I was at a meeting in Drumkeeran community centre in County Leitrim. It was about a small school called Tarmon school, which is on the shores of Lough Allen. Last year and this year, no child has started in the school. The three children in sixth class are leaving next year and if no more families come and no more children start, it will become a one-teacher school, which will be unsustainable and the school will disappear. Many of those small schools are going. Without getting into the argument about how good or bad it may be for children to be in a very small school, the story this is telling is that rural Ireland is dying. When I stand at Tarmon school and look around me, all I can see on the horizon are trees - Sitka spruce is growing everywhere. If that is the future, then we are only going to have foxes and badgers living on marginal land because there will be no people. Forestry does not really provide any employment or the labour intensity that would sustain communities and people. There has to be a vision for rural Ireland which is better than this.

The people at the meeting last night were saying the only way out was to do what they did in Kiltyclogher, which had a similar problem last summer. They started a project called KiltyLive. They invited people from the cities to come and live in Kiltyclogher, a beautiful place in north Leitrim. They got six or seven families to come. They did up a number of old houses and people came and lived in them. I think seven or eight extra children started in the school, so it is up to where it needs to be and will grow from there. It is not just about keeping a small school going. It is about keeping a whole community going. If there is a problem with a school, that means there is an awful big problem out there that needs to be solved. This document is aspirational about all of that, while the nuts and bolts of it are really not there.

If we want people to live in places such as Drumkeeran, Tarmon and Kiltyclogher, we have to ensure there are GP, bus and education services there for them. There must also be opportunities there for them and a sense of future. What is missing in many places in rural Ireland is a sense of future. Following the meeting, I spoke to a farmer who is approaching retirement and has four children. He told me that instead of encouraging his children to remain on the farm, he told them to go to college, get a good job and get out of the area, but that he now thinks he was wrong because life in rural Ireland is a wonderful life. In regard to people moving from the cities to rural Ireland, there was a man at the meeting from Kiltyclogher who spoke of his move from Dublin to Kiltyclogher and of the sense of safety and community that exists in rural Ireland. One gets the sense that one is not just an individual but is part of something bigger. This is the sense one gets from small rural communities. If we lose this, we lose the essence of what is to be Irish. The Government needs to focus on this when drafting plans of this type. Plans are great and wonderful but they are aspirational. For them to be implemented, investment is needed.

When I raise issues with Ministers, be it about schools buses, about which I spoke earlier to the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, or other issues, the response is always that if the demand does not exist for a service it cannot be provided, but if a service is not available there will never be demand. People will not live in areas where there are no services. If there are no services there are no opportunities and if there are no opportunities, there is no activity. If we are to create a spiral upwards, we must have opportunity and activity. People bring about activity. Everything arises out of the human being striving to achieve. In many areas in rural Ireland, people are not striving; they are sitting back watching time tick by and hoping that everything will be all right. That will not work. Rather than producing glossy reports, the Government needs to invest money in the development of rural areas; otherwise, we are lost. The call for investment in rural Ireland is not a just cry from the wilderness because investment in rural Ireland is an investment in the country.

At the meeting I spoke of earlier, the man who moved from west Dublin to Kiltyclogher in 1966 or 1967 also told of the wonderful life his family have had there and the wonderful place it is. He also told of how when the community in Dublin come to visit him they frequently tell him, "You're in Heaven here; we wish we could have that". Reference was made earlier to the school in Tarmon that is on the verge of closure and to the attention given to the children attending that school and how well they are educated there. If children in Dublin wanted to attend a school like that, they would have to pay thousands of euro to do so. To get a place in such a school, parents would have to enrol their children before they are even baptised. The opportunity exists in rural Ireland to give people a better chance, a better place to live and work and move forward.

The issues arising are about a divide between east and west and, in the main, a divide between what we choose to do and not do. When I was listening to the debate earlier, I heard Deputy Mattie McGrath say that there was no point in politics or politicians because the bankers are in control of everything and we are powerless and do not matter. There is a sense these days in society and in politics that nobody has any power to address issues in regard to the HSE and so on, that all of these problems are too big for any of us to solve. That is very dangerous. Government is powerful. It does have the power to bring about change and to make things better for rural communities and for people who are in mortgage distress and so on, but Government has to choose to do that. Government has to make definite choices to show it stands by the people.

Deputy Catherine Connolly spoke out the islands and our coastal and fishing communities. By and large, the only fishing activity open to people in small harbour communities around the country is lobster pots because they are banned from fishing the sea, yet super trawlers are allowed to do so. If we are to revive the island communities, coastal communities and small fishing communities the length and breadth of the country, we have to provide them with the opportunity to make a living. There are many references to investment in this document. The aim of this plan must be to ensure that there are opportunities available to people to do an honest day's work, for which they receive a good day's pay, and a sense that the future of their children in their areas will be better than theirs.

Most people living in rural Ireland believe that if their children are to have a better life they need to leave rural Ireland. That is not good. It is a failure on the part not only of this Government, but of every Government since the foundation of this State. When the late Eamon De Valera set up the Land Commission, some people from the west moved to Meath and other people in the west expanded their farms. The mindset that there is no hope for those living on marginal land in the west of Ireland and so on needs to change. We need to provide hope. This will require a change in mindset. While this document goes someway towards that, it does not go far enough, which is its failure.

There are many issues I could discuss today, including renewable energy and other opportunities that could be brought about. We could talk about broadband and the fact that there is practically no broadband service available in any part of rural Ireland to anyone who wants to work there, if they had that opportunity. My question for the Minister of State, Deputy English, is if the mindset is going to change. We have many documents of this type. I am sure we could fill this Chamber with the many documents that have been produced since the foundation of this State on the issue of what needs to be done for rural areas, what we need to do to redevelop Ireland's spatial strategies and so on. What has not changed is the mindset that the only hope for people from the west of Ireland is to move them out of it. If this does not change, nothing will change. That mindset has to change and this can only happen if we bring investment to the people.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the national planning framework.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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My apologies, Deputy, I called you too soon. I should have called Deputy Troy next.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I would have conceded to Deputy Fitzmaurice but I have to be somewhere else soon. I welcome the opportunity to speak about this important framework. The plan details how the country will develop and grow over the next 23 years and, as such, it is very important. I was struck to hear members of the Government bemoan constructive criticism and state that there had been wide consultation on the plan. I agree that consultation meetings were held in various parts of the country but some of the issues identified were not heeded. Consultation for the sake of it is pointless.

The Government had proposed a two-hour debate on this plan but members of the Business Committee forced the issue and demanded a far more substantive debate than two hours on this plan that will direct how the country is to grow and develop over the next 20 plus years. Given the longevity of this plan and its importance, it might be worthwhile extending the deadline in respect of submissions on the draft. The current timeframe is too tight. The submissions of many chambers of commerce are undertaken in a voluntary capacity in conjunction with other work. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy English, to give consideration to extending that deadline.

Critical to how this country develops will be the new capital plan but we have not yet had sight of what is in the plan.

In terms of transport, for which I am Fianna Fáil spokesperson, the Minister, Deputy Ross, promised to make his submission to the capital plan known but is yet to so do. He admitted his plan would be based on what money he gets rather than what he needs. It is essential to analyse our existing infrastructure and identify where improvements need to be made. We should not say we will do what we can within a tight budget but, rather, ask what infrastructural projects are needed to ensure there is a proper integrated transport network across the island. If there are financial constraints, projects should be dealt with based on priority.

Members do not know, for instance, the status of the DART underground project. It is possibly one of the most critical infrastructural developments for the capital because it connects and makes the best use of existing rail networks in the city. Members do not know at what stage it is. They do not know the status of the proposed motorway between Mullingar and Sligo, which is another critical piece of infrastructure to ensure the midlands and west receive investment and nor do Members know the status of the Limerick to Cork road or that of the A5, which will connect with the North.

The new chairman of Irish Rail told the Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport yesterday that Irish Rail needs €103 million per annum for the next five years to maintain tracks and a steady state for its existing infrastructure. We need far greater ambition in terms of what can be done in rail infrastructure. Deputy Connolly spoke about light rail for Galway. Railway tracks in my constituency of Longford-Westmeath need to be upgraded to a twin line. Places such as Mullingar will have the opportunity to develop and grow when they are connected with the eastern seaboard.

The national planning framework refers to "Improving access to Dublin Airport, to include improved public transport access, connections from the road network from the west and north and in the longer term, consideration of heavy rail access to facilitate direct services from the national rail network in the context of potential future electrification." However, when I asked the Minister, Deputy Ross, a question about rail connection to Dublin Airport on 19 October 2017, his reply stated:

It does not include the Clongriffin spur to Dublin airport or another heavy rail connection to the airport. There are no plans to reconsider this issue at this time.

There are contradictions between what the Minister with responsibility for the area says and what has been outlined in the plan.

The draft plan reaffirms the imbalance in favour of the east coast and a bias in favour of Dublin and the four other main growth centres, namely, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. There are gaping omissions in provision for the midlands and the north west. There is no ambition to help those areas grow and develop. A comprehensive plan was submitted in regard to Athlone. The CEO of Athlone Chamber of Commerce told me his organisation realises Athlone needs to grow as a region. The midlands region generally, including Longford, Westmeath and Tullamore, can grow and develop and help counter-balance the emphasis that has been put on the eastern seaboard. There is nothing in that regard in the framework.

I am greatly concerned by the discriminatory policy against one-off housing in the countryside contained in the provision, which requires that a housing need demand assessment be included in all future development plans. The Minister of State, Deputy English, represents a rural constituency and knows how difficult it is for those born and bred in a particular area to obtain planning permission. If the housing need demand assessment is enforced, it is my view and that of senior planners that it will be next to impossible to obtain. Members have spoken of the death of rural communities, the loss of teachers from schools and the loss of services because there is nobody in the towns and villages to support them. The housing need demand assessment would have a detrimental effect in that regard and serious consideration should be given to removing it from the framework and county development plans because it will cause much difficulty if it comes in.

Representatives of Longford County Council told me they have huge concerns in respect of the framework and believe it will adversely affect smaller counties such as Longford. They made the point that midland counties are the principal beneficiaries of the redistribution of the local property tax equalisation fund, receiving €21.6 million in 2017. In contrast, Dublin and other eastern counties contributed more than €50 million to the fund in 2017, which illustrates the current imbalance. The Government will not enable smaller towns such as Kilbeggan, Moate, Ballymahon, Granard and Edgeworthstown grow in any real or substantial way because of the arbitrary targets to be imposed upon them. If the Government is not going to let towns grow but is going to impose more restrictions on people seeking to obtain one-off rural houses, how will rural Ireland be supported? How will shops and post offices be supported? How will we ensure there are adequate staff for schools? It will not be supported. Although I acknowledge much work went into the national planning framework and officials met those who made submissions, given the severity, importance and longevity of the report, it should be pushed out for several weeks. It should be debated in the House in conjunction with the capital plan because the capital plan and infrastructural investment over the coming decade will be so important for sustainable growth.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this so-called national planning framework. I have a different name for it. I call it the national planning to be an F word and up at the backwood, because it is anti-rural. No thought has been put into it. I went to the launch of the framework in Sligo by the former Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney. He encouraged people to make submissions. I held a meeting in the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's county to learn about the county and its needs and I am sure other Deputies did likewise. I called a meeting in Sligo. I went to counties Cavan, Roscommon, Leitrim, Galway and Mayo to listen to people and try to form a constructive plan for what has been called the BMW or Border, midlands, west region, which has been deprived of funding for many years. When I look at what emerged on paper, I wonder why I bothered doing all of that. Other Members said officials reverted to those who made submissions. I made probably one of the most detailed submissions on every county I have named but did not see much reference to it in terms of what is to be done for those counties or what is ahead of them. The person responsible for the framework must not have gone outside the M50.

There is reference to the DART underground in Dublin. I took the DART to Malahide yesterday.

I come from a construction background. If €200 million can build a DART line out to the airport, continuing to Swords and other areas, it should be done - a stitch in time saves nine - instead of dreaming of spending €4 billion that will never be spent if we are honest and straight with people.

When the Minister launched the national planning framework in Sligo, I had understood that we were to focus on cities and large towns and ensure that rural life keeps going. Sligo was among the towns nominated to become a city. Will this be done? No. Athlone was also nominated. County Roscommon gets very little mention altogether. Galway city is mentioned in the framework, but the problem is that the counties in the west seem to be forgotten. Cromwell said, "To hell or to Connacht." This document seems to say, "To hell or to a big city or larger town. Forget about the rural areas."

The Brits are working on the A5 from Derry down to Aughnacloy. A spur needs to go out to the M1. Do the people in Letterkenny or other areas of Donegal not deserve a proper road? Should there not be a proper road from Letterkenny to Sligo, further on to Charlestown and on to meet the new motorway? This is not even in my constituency, but it is about ensuring balanced regional development. It is about giving everyone an opportunity and not having an apartheid system whereby the best roads and rail and everything else are in one part of the country and there is nothing elsewhere. Do those employing people in Mayo and similar counties not deserve a proper road when they come off the M4 on the approach to Mullingar, go through Edgeworthstown and Longford and continue towards Castlebar? In my opinion, they do.

Regarding rail, let us be honest with people: the plan is to get rid of four rail lines, not to increase the number of lines, at a time when our Government preaches about climate change, public transport and what we will do in 2020 and 2030. At the same time, there is no vision for the kind of infrastructure required. The national planning framework, together with another document being circulated to county managers throughout Ireland, says it very clearly: one-off houses will not be built in rural areas. By saying this, we are telling people in communities that are under a fair amount of pressure - and their local schools and shops - to wither away and die out. Above all, the one great thing in rural Ireland is the community. If the Government starves communities when it comes to one-off housing, it will ensure the slow death of rural Ireland.

Honesty is required when putting a plan together, but the national planning framework seems to be tilted in one direction. In fairness, there are major problems inside the M50; more roads and railway lines are needed. Dublin Airport must be the only main airport in the world that is not connected to a railway service. That is a damning indictment because this is a problem if we are trying to bring in tourism. We need tourism in the west of Ireland. The Wild Atlantic Way is a great success. How does one get to it? One must hire a car or cycle. Those are the only two ways. There is no train or bus to bring people directly to it. That will not bring in the number of people we need to allow many places in rural Ireland to survive and be viable.

The Minister of State needs to go back to the drawing board. We are talking about submissions, but is attention paid to submissions? Did I waste my time booking rooms for meetings in various hotels in six or seven counties because I passionately believe that an area of the country that has been neglected for years deserves the same as any other area? Does this plan examine the position of the farming community, for example? When the country was going down the Swanee, the farming community kept it going. Unfortunately, in our areas, especially in the west, we suffered mass emigration because of the sins that were committed. Every politician right across the board is working to try to ensure that jobs are created, but one must create incentives and ensure a fair playing field. As Deputy Martin Kenny rightly pointed out, if there are trees growing around people in every field, there will be no community, and if the Government subsidises this, it will choke the life out of rural areas in all counties, especially in the west, which has been badly affected.

Is there a vision for Longford, a town which, in my opinion, has been neglected for years? Is there a vision to make Athlone into a city? We hear all the talk and lovely vibes to the effect that we need another city. Waterford and Sligo were mentioned. However, this plan basically tells everyone to head to the few cities we have and create bigger ghettos. Unfortunately, the infrastructure and the housing are not there, and if we keep doing this, we will turn Ireland from a managed landscape into a wilderness. Perhaps that is the plan - to bring in the Yanks and the other tourists to look at trees growing instead of fields being productive, instead of what we call life in these areas, instead of vibrant communities working together for a common benefit. Those communities might be small but there may be children going to school in Dublin today who are nearly on top of each other in classrooms. What they would not give if they only knew the freedom and the kind of education they can get when class sizes are not as big?

We must go back to the drawing board. I will let the Deputies from the south speak for themselves. I am talking about the west, which has been neglected not only by this Government but also by those which preceded it. It has been the bad child at the back door; it got nothing and was never looked after. It needs fair play. The Minister of State - in the context of this document - needs to consider seriously how communities are made sustainable. Consider the way in which the single farm payment is dished out. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and, unfortunately, it is the family farm that is getting poorer. As Deputy Martin Kenny said earlier, fathers are telling their families that they had better go to school, go to college and move away. Unfortunately, these families have not got fair play. If that keeps happening, the Government will get its wish in this plan of ensuring rural Ireland's demise.

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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In considering the planning framework, it is important we set realistic expectations in terms of what a planning framework should look like. Too often, I have seen in local area plans a situation where much is promised and little is delivered. The difficulty seems to be that the very nature of a planning framework is aspirational and is centred on land use objectives and possibilities for particular areas. However, the missing link, which is delivery, capital and funding, is very often missing from the equation. This can create a misconception for users of that information, in particular the general public, when they begin to review plans - I will use the example of a local area plan hierarchy as it is the one I am most familiar with. This can create false expectations when people view a plan, and these have often been created by a local authority that has set out to speculate as to what could happen at a particular site or building, were a number of things to happen.

A planner will colour in a map with a particular colour and an artist's impression can then be created of a particular facility. Perhaps a farmer's land may be coloured as an amenity and open space, which then lends itself to an artist's impression of a sports field with a campus, facilities, leisure hall, gym, car park, access roads and all sorts of wonderful things around it. In one extreme example in the town of Kilcock, which went through a local area plan in the past two years - the Minister of State will be familiar with it as it is across the water from Meath - all that is missing is the palm trees. The county council planners drew up an impression of the town square and what it would look like when remodelled under the local area plan. A very impressive, futuristic and desirable scene was created, but it bore no resemblance to reality because, in order for that fantastic plaza to be developed, with or without palm trees, ownership of it had to cede to the public purse or to anybody who was willing to do something with it. The plot had to be bought and sold, it had to be capitalised and it had to receive planning permission and funding, before going ahead to completion in order to be used. There are many steps in a planning framework which may never be realised.

The difficulty is that this leads to a sense of false expectations among the community. It also leads to gaps in the plans which mean we end up with brownfield sites, unutilised greenfield sites and worse situations such as derelict buildings. In the plan, these might have made sense because, if the plan came to pass, these would no longer be vacant sites but, unfortunately, they are often vacant without that follow-through and development.

At a higher level, in the national planning framework we are discussing today, one can see a similar approach at regional level. I represent Kildare North and I have heard speakers today talk about Meath, Wicklow and Louth, which are commuter belt counties and have seen extreme volumes of growth in the past 15 to 20 years. However, the population increase has not been matched by an increase in facilities, amenities and public and private transport links. Educational and health care facilities are not in place and there is a lack of employment opportunities. These are the gaps we need to begin filling in a national planning framework at regional level in order to take this step up from the local area plans.

Kildare North has seen high population growth. The town I live in, Sallins, has grown from 500 people in the 1999 census to 5,000 in the most recent census, a 1,000% increase, and at one stage it was labelled the fastest growing town in Europe. This has happened without any amenities being added, such as additional playing fields. Thankfully, the rail infrastructure has begun to creep back into gear and has improved greatly, but there is still a long way to go and we are again seeing the problem of overloaded trains and buses, and of services being inadequate to cater for the demand, given current capacity. Amenities have been an issue for a long time. On housing, we have come from a situation of having a surplus to having a massive deficit, as we are all now well aware, yet we have done nothing in the meantime to fill the amenity gaps in those spaces. We now have a very real need for multiples of housing units to be delivered but let us hope that, this time, we do not make the mistake of the past, which was to deliver them in isolation, without the services, infrastructure and amenities to support them.

There is a possibility for people to live in regional areas in a distributed way and the concept of the greater Dublin area is one that can be pursued in terms of the commuter counties being part of that. The fundamental concept of having people living in the commuter counties and working in Dublin is a viable one, but it is a difficult one at present because of the lack of public transport linkage, educational infrastructure and other amenities. If we can fill those gaps, it is an answer to the housing crisis, among other things, because it would make it possible, attractive and feasible for people to live in farther-flung places yet enjoy access to work, in order to further their careers, and access to education. In this way, it becomes an enabler because people are able to attend universities a little further from home, without having to break the bank to do so, if they can commute to access educational institutions.

This would also see social capital and social connections beginning to be forged. If somebody is originally from north Dublin and ends up living in south Kildare, and there is extended family distributed across a number of counties, decent public transport connections and a decent planning framework will allow relatively straightforward movement between the areas. People can visit each other and stay in touch, and the distance is not as amplified as it might sometimes be. This is often the case with cities internationally, where people have extended family and friends. On the Continent, it is not unusual to commute to a party or visit friends for dinner even if they live 90 minutes away, because people hop on a train and it is a pretty straightforward journey. That would be quite unusual here and people would generally have to stay overnight, so it is less done. The idea of distributed population has worked very successfully in other areas but we have not grasped it here. Therefore, we still have the problems of gridlock and social mismatch, whereby people are cut off from their extended family. This also applies to many other structures, for example, to child care, education and social bonds, inclusivity and the feeling of belonging and making a home from home in a new commuter belt location, which often may not be where people started out.

These are some of the challenges we have to face when we sit down to look at the national planning framework. While I am most familiar with regional and local planning, I have seen too often in the past these mistakes being made and repeated. Making a mistake once is bad, but making it twice is worse. I hope the national planning framework will succeed. I hope it will consider employment opportunities around the country and in the regions, as well as in the centre. While we acknowledge that the centre is going to remain at the hub of the majority of activity, which is probably realistic in the medium term, if we can put the connections into services in order to get people in and out of the centre, to plan for that and, at the same time, to deliver quality of life amenities, health care, education, sporting opportunities and all of those vital surrounding factors where people are living today, that will provide the basis for a successful framework. I very much hope that is where the plan will turn out to be.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I am a great fan of science fiction. I have to say that when I hear about visions for 2040 and for national planning frameworks, and the beautiful visions that are set out in such documents, I immediately think of science fiction.

The vision is beautiful but the reality often turns out to bear no relation whatsoever to the vision that has been set out. It is a bit like in science fiction where one has two genres - the one where there is a plan for the future that everybody can subscribe to and which has everything one would want in it. It is balanced, harmonious and integrated. It could happen if we planned rationally and democratically.

The other genre is the dystopian nightmare. I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy English, that the utopian vision that is often presented in these plans rarely comes to pass. Much more often than not we end up with the dystopian nightmare because regardless of how beautiful the plan is and how well thought out it is, the people who make the plan actually have no real power to implement it because they have ceded the power to make the important decisions to other people who have no interest whatsoever in the plan. It will not surprise the Minister of State to know that I am talking about the market and the dynamics of the market. We, as the democratically elected representatives of the people, set out a plan and consult with the people. There is, however, a question about the extent to which we have actually consulted or consult with the people who are the real stakeholders on this or any other plan. Even if we do this and we develop a well integrated and harmonious vision for the future, that plan is undermined, subverted, ruined and neutralised - whatever one wants to call it - by the fact that those people with large amounts of money, investors, people with capital, the banks, the developers and the private owners of the land are the ones who make the decisions.

With regard to previous spatial frameworks I have heard many of our rural colleagues in the House speaking on the destruction of rural Ireland. They know, far better than I do, about the realities of the destruction of rural Ireland. As an urban Deputy I absolutely agree with them. We periodically produce plans - this plan will do it again - which are aspirations to do something to ensure we have proper regionally balanced development and to maintain sustainable town and village life in rural Ireland. That is a beautiful plan, but does it happen? To date it certainly has not happened. We have had increasing centralisation in a few hubs such as Dublin, Cork and one or two others. This is regardless of spatial plans and the aspirations for regional development. Why does this happen? It is because the decisions about where investment happens are taken by big business and big capital. They dictate it. We have a Government, and I would say the two major parties in the State, that actively facilitate the ceding of their own power to these voracious entities and capitalists - to use old-fashioned left-wing language. We end up simply trailing and facilitating them. They decide where the investment is going to and the Government facilitates them, which renders all the plans nonsense.

I shall give a few examples in different areas. Ireland wants to sustain its small towns and villages but that cannot be done if the Government cuts the bus services while telling us that commercial viability has to be the main criteria by which we judge the viability of bus services. This is what is done and we hear it week in and week out, especially from Fine Gael. When Fianna Fáil was in government, however, it was not much different. We hear that the service must be commercially viable, but if we want to protect our small towns and villages then sorry, we need a bus service and public transport services whose future is not determined by whether or not they are commercially viable.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It is like Dublin.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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What does the Deputy mean "like Dublin"?

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Like the €60 million given to subsidise-----

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Okay, Deputy Ó Cuív wants to play Dublin off against the country. As an urban Deputy I want to see rural Ireland protected and I make the point that in order to do that we do not privatise or bring to bear commercial priorities to services such as public transport. If we do that - we are doing it - bus services and transport infrastructure will be cut to those areas. Post offices will be closed - this has been done. Small schools will close because it is all about the viability, in the narrowest possible terms, of these particular services. The market does not consider it a good idea to subsidise bus services or transport infrastructure or to have post offices that achieve social goals, if they cannot at the same time make money. No matter how good it was, in reality is the plan goes out the window.

Housing is another obvious example of this. The market completely undermines any of the spatial plans. Ireland's recent experience is an obvious example of that. I remember the regional planning guidelines that dictated certain big developments in the Dún Laoghaire area. This included building houses on green spaces because certain population projections for building houses had to be met. Planning permission was given for certain developments but the joke was that these houses were built by the market that had no interest in actually connecting the homes they built to the people who needed the houses. The houses were built and the people could not afford the houses. The value of those units collapsed, the banks collapsed and we still had people who were homeless with nowhere to live. The market stopped building, the banks stopped lending and the people who needed the houses have left the State because there is no work for them as the economy has collapsed. In any event they could not afford the houses that were built. For six or seven years no houses were built, even though we had these beautiful plans and projections about population growth. It was all rendered meaningless because the housing market was completely privatised. The investment decisions and the infrastructure investment that would go with it was, in the end, actually decided by private banks and private developers. The Government continues to put the decision making into their hands, even as we face a housing and homelessness emergency. I do not really see the point in these national framework plans if the Government continues to cede control over land, property and capital more generally into the hands of these entities.

I shall give another example of forestry and Coillte. If Ireland is to tackle the environmental issues facing us - it is one of the big imperatives for the future - then we must do something serious about carbon emissions. Again, commercial imperatives prevent the Government from doing this because it does not want to give over land to forestry, which would be a carbon sink and so on. Ireland pleads to the EU that we do not want to have to meet the targets and that we want special treatment and so on and so forth. Coillte is the body that is supposed to plant forests. In the business pages of The Irish Times this week one will read that Coillte now wants to engage in public private partnerships to use its land to build giant wind farms. The article also says that Coillte then plans to sell them off. This has not been mentioned in the Dáil this week. Coillte is explicit about this.It is going to sell off Coillte estate. We need to control whether we are going to be the ones to decide what happens to land use and what we will do around environmental protection and climate mitigation.

5 o’clock

How can we do that if the body in charge of 7% of the land mass of the State and which is charged with the afforestation of the country plans to sell off massive tracts of land to its public private partners? How can we control or have any influence on the future if that is what we are doing? Those examples can be multiplied across almost every sector of the economy. I believe in planning and in consultation and input but what is the point when all the other plans have come to nothing while the market has dictated our circumstances until now? What is the point if we continue to allow big business and corporations to gain control of more land, infrastructure, services and capital because the Government will not tax them? Wealth is concentrated ever more in their hands while the population is left as a passive bystander to watch what the multinational corporations do to us.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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First, I note that the idea of having ten minutes to deal with something that is meant to affect the future of every citizen is ludicrous.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I agree.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Whoever arranged this debate is doing a disservice. I presume it is no more than that. Second, I understand that next Friday week is the final date for submissions. I take these things seriously because I have seen before with rural development plans how people have ignored the small print when they were published but there has then been outrage when they start to be applied. When one starts reading this, one finds a lot of hidden stuff. A lot of stuff is written in fairly turgid text which makes it very hard to decipher what exactly is meant. I suggest that one thing that could arise from the debate is that the Minister gives us another three or four weeks to put in our submissions and permit internal debate to take place within parties and among Independents. That would be to take it seriously.

It is clear that resources are to be focused in four or five cities. It is also clear that the plan is intended to drive those cities. There is a theory that one can only get economic growth in cities. We need a fundamental debate about whether that is a fact. Is not the whole island of Ireland, in fact, only the size of a city area in the United States of America, for example, where one often gets twin cities with recreational areas complementing them? I wonder, therefore, if our vision is right and whether we recognise how small this little island is. I have found it baffling as a Dublin person to see the great deal of damage done to quality of life in the city by so-called "planners" by the unnecessary concentration of employment, in particular employment the State controls, with all the attendant problems that causes. I am very critical of rural people who keep going around with the béal bocht because in many ways, rural living has a lot of advantages. We do not face congestion and most of us do not have heroin on our doorsteps. There tends to be very good housing. Most of my neighbours at home have a good life. The only problem is that there is not enough gainful employment to give more people a good life in the area. When I look at the city of Dublin, I see it getting rapidly worse. If one does not get in here by 7 a.m., one can forget it until about 11 a.m. Getting out of the city presents the same problem in the evening. It takes an hour and a half. It will take an investment of billions of euro in public transport and a population freeze to resolve that issue.

I look at parts of the city other than those parts of the south side which others look at, notwithstanding that I am very familiar with those too having come from the Donnybrook-Ballsbridge area and having gone to school in Mount Merrion. I look at places like the Oliver Bond flat complex, west Tallaght, Neilstown and Ronanstown and I ask what chance in life do many of the children in these areas have. I know very well the lady who, quite rightly, took a court case against Dublin City Council for over-concentrating homeless centres in a centre she had been using, until it was closed down, to provide pre-school and after-school meals for young children from the Liberties. This lady comes from a flat complex in the Liberties herself and has devoted her life to these young children. I remember doing a presentation of certificates for her to beautiful young kids of 14 years of age. Four or five years later, I met her and she is on the phone to me regularly. We are good friends. I told her that I presumed some of those kids had got caught up in the web of drugs and social problems which bedevil the area and she told me that, unfortunately, that was so. They were the most beautiful kids I ever met. Anyone who tells me that is great living and that it is the kind of Ireland to which we aspire is wrong. That is the part of the city that is ignored by the planners. They would rather dream of the parts of the city that they know and which do not suffer from those problems.

It is tragic that I have only four minutes left. The document says the following about rural planning: "Careful planning is required to manage demand in our most accessible countryside areas around cities and towns, focusing on the functional requirements of rural economies and rural communities and in compliance with EU treaties whereas remoter rural areas should benefit from a more flexible approach, particularly where they help to sustain fragile communities". It then sets out that these areas are defined by a commuter catchment of at least 15% of the relevant city area workforce. It then says that in rural areas of urban influence, one must have a demonstrable economic need to live in a rural area and that the relevant siting criteria for rural housing are the statutory guidelines. It also says that in areas under urban influence, it will continue to be necessary to demonstrate a functional economic requirement for housing need.

Do I have the Minister of State's attention?

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Yes. I am taking notes.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Will he do me a favour and ask the officials in the Department to send me an English translation of this bureau-speak? I have an idea of what it really means. It actually means that because of the Flemish ruling, there will be no rural houses for these areas. That is what they are trying to tell us but they are afraid to put it upfront on the table and to tell us what they have planned for us because we might rebel and say "Sorry, we have fantastic quality of life". I ask not to be given the carbon argument, because in ten or 15 years, we will all have electric cars. I ask not to be given the wastewater argument, because we look after our wastewater better than the municipal authorities, from whose activities the vast number of serious wastewater issues arise. They are not caused by people who have their own wastewater systems and must adhere to the highest standards. Moreover, it is not true that one needs to show a functional economic requirement.

Another absolutely amazing aspect of the document is its discussion of something an tAthair Micheál Mac Gréil has spoken about many times - the gentrification of the countryside. Poor people are being moved out because of a refusal to build local authority housing while middle-class or wealthy people can afford to live in the countryside. Up to seven years ago, when the last Government came in, we had such a thing as a rural cottage or county council house. One gave the site for €100.

It was cheap housing for the State. People got local authority housing. Some genius decided to put an end to that and to force families to move away from where they grew up and where they had supports. No rural county council houses are being built any more because there is an absolute fetish that for some reason, which nobody has yet explained-----

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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They were built in Tipperary. It can be done if local authorities want to do it.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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They are certainly not encouraged.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy should check the facts.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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They are not encouraged. My local authority will not even give out housing loans.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy can talk to the local authority about that.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I have contacted officials but they gave me to understand that this is in compliance with national policy. The Government parties should not try to push this document. They should not think that they will sell this gobbledegook and that we are too stupid to read the document. The people who wrote this were not willing to put their cards on the table; there is obfuscation. Unfortunately, I would like to say much more about this document, including, for example, in the context of the lack of commuter rail policies for Galway or Limerick cities. We could solve many of our traffic problems-----

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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It is mentioned. The Deputy should read the document.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister of State should show me where it is stated.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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We are not saying which rail service has to be provided but it is in the document

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It is not. Effectively, the Government wants to close down rural Ireland as we know it and abandon people who live in the countryside. The Government parties are following some ideology that the people do not buy into and they should not be surprised when the people bite back.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the opportunity to contribute. I agree with previous speakers regarding the fact that the Government should extend the deadline for submissions, particularly as this framework will be in place well into the future. The fact that the debate is taking place just a number of weeks in advance of the deadline does not do the framework a service in allowing political parties and others who may be stimulated into action to make submissions on foot of this debate.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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That is fine but that is why the process started last February.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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There is no provision for questions and answers.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I am offering an opinion.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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So am I.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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When the Minister of State is called, he can reply, otherwise we will have to go into a form of Question Time.

It is important to raise a few issues about the framework. If we are looking beyond the horizon of 2040, we have to look beyond traditional forms of transport and infrastructure. We also have to consider what will be required to sustain communities, both rural and urban, to ensure quality of life. The key areas are health and education, particularly at first, second and third level. There must be investment in our health system. The population will dramatically increase by up to 1 million in the coming years. More people will live longer but will experience many more complications. The framework must take into account the many attributes that make up a positive society. Deputy Ó Cuív referred to a number of issues that will have to be examined, such as the urbanisation of our communities and how to ensure quality of life in these urban environments. Many of our urban environments, unfortunately, do not have the necessary infrastructure - such as crèche and education facilities, proper housing stock and other supports for community development - in place to allow them to prosper. We have to learn from the mistakes of the past. We cannot simply go into panic mode now and plan to build houses without proper strategic thinking. I can instance many large housing estates that were built in previous times in the absence of foresight or vision regarding what was required for sustainable communities.

We have to be ambitious and imaginative. We are at a critical juncture in our history. In previous times, political parties and Governments of all hues made bold leaps and took initiatives to expand the country's capacity. Now is the time to do that again. There will be a large increase in the population and that will require significant investment to ensure that the economy is competitive and that resources are maximised. One of the difficulties we have is the European budgetary system and the deficit targets that have to be met. We have to be able to write down capital investments over a longer period. I cannot understand why such investments have to be written down over four years. The cost of a hospital or road that might last 40 years has to be written down over four years in the context of budgetary arithmetic. That puts a huge brake on the capacity of the State to fund long-term critical infrastructure, such as roads, schools and hospitals, and it will retard the ability of the State to invest in itself on behalf of its citizens. I urge the Government to examine the budgetary process. There is a 10% cap on funding of infrastructure through PPPs. The reason I instance that is money can be borrowed on the markets at 0%. There is free money available in terms of interest rates. While we are pinched in the context of deficiencies in our capital infrastructure programme, now is the time not only to plan but to build infrastructure. The Government should use whatever political influence it has in Europe when negotiating the Brexit deal because we will be at a severe disadvantage because of Brexit and there might be an exemption from EU budgetary rules for countries that are well funded through their own budgetary process but that fall foul of EU laws if they invest in critical infrastructural developments and make a long-term investment in people to expand the capacity of an economy. That should be examined.

The Minister of State said this process started in February and many Members are being repetitive in asking for an extension. There are people outside the House who would like to make submissions in respect of the framework following the Minister's request and they should be accommodated in view of the fact that an additional few weeks will not make much difference. Let us be honest.

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I am not against that.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Government parties do no exactly spring into action every morning when they get up and, therefore, another few weeks will not delay the process too much if we just give everybody an opportunity to contribute. Those who wish to take that opportunity will do so and those who do not want to do so will not. However, we should be fair to everybody.

In its submission, Fianna Fáil has sought the establishment of a national infrastructure commission. That would be important because we need to gel all the aspects of the economy together to make it cohesive, to streamline investment and planning and to ensure investment follows populations trends and movements. Such a commission would be good for all those reasons because it would pull all aspects of Government spending together.

The Government parties have not covered themselves in glory on housing. There is no point in saying anything otherwise and there is no much point in the Minister of State disputing that. There is a great deal of work to be done and they have acknowledged that they need to do more. They have said they are doing their best. Unfortunately, however, their best will fall dramatically short of what is required given the increased demand for housing alone based on current population trends coupled with demographic changes over the next few years. The Government has not planned for an older population in the context of housing. That fact should be examined. Everyone is talking about building three-bedroom, semi-detached houses across the country but there is no strategic thinking about how people will be housed when they become single occupants as their family members move out or die.

It is as simple as that. We have no strategic policy and, therefore, have large numbers of elderly people living alone in houses which are no longer suitable for their needs. When looking at planning, investment, house design and community design, that particular future-proofing issue should be taken into account. It would save us many challenges in the years ahead in terms of trying to adapt housing and moving people from large houses to smaller houses. It would be done in a more structured manner. I urge the Government to examine the area.

Finally, I will be slightly parochial but for a national reason. The Taoiseach came to Cork last week and announced the completion of the M20 from Limerick to Cork but the previous Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, also came to Cork and announced a convention centre some time ago. However, all that is there is a few pallets with a bit of sand on top of them. A year and a half later, there is nothing else there. On the same day, the first sod was turned on The Capitol development and that is now completely built and fully occupied but not a stone has been laid on top of another at the convention centre site. There is, therefore, sometimes a jaundiced view of these particular announcements. However, I urge that the north ring road in Cork, linking the Dublin road with the south ring road on to Killarney, and the M20 would be seen as strategic investment that would counterbalance the growth in Dublin. The three university cities of Galway, Limerick and Cork, with an international airport, a large airport into Europe and a critical mass of people could sustain economic growth and act as a counterbalance. I, therefore, urge the Government to examine that from the point of view of investment in the south west.