Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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I have gone back through all the relevant documentation and read what I brought forward in December 2015 and it is absolutely definite, in my view, what the Government's decision was then. As the former Minister with responsibility in this area, I have reread the documents that were put forward at the time and it is very clear that this plan needs a vote of the Dáil and Seanad. I have checked this with my Labour colleagues who sat at the Cabinet table with me and they are of the same opinion. The reason the provision for a vote was included is that, following discussions with officials, it was felt the framework had to be a million miles away from the previous plan, namely, the much-maligned national spatial strategy. That plan was correctly perceived as a great example of stroke politics, with something for every person at the Cabinet table. Therefore, the intention at the time was, through the new framework, to ensure this would never happen again and ensure complete Oireachtas buy-in, hence my ensuring there would be a vote on the final framework.

My successor, the current Tánaiste, Deputy Coveney, when speaking on Second Stage of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016 on 28 September 2016, endorsed what I had brought to Government and had been agreed ten months earlier. He said, "the framework shall be subject to the provisions of relevant EU environmental directives; and that the Government shall submit the draft of a revised or new framework for the approval of the Oireachtas before it is published and shall have regard to any resolution of the Oireachtas in the finalisation of the NPF". What part of this is not clear? In fairness to the Tánaiste, on 7 May 2016 he invited all Deputies and Senators to the audiovisual room for a briefing on the national planning framework, which was to take place on 15 June of that year. In an email that came from his private secretary, he stated that, as provided for under the provisions of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016, and in response to the recommendations of the Mahon tribunal, the final framework document would be subject to the approval of Dáil Éireann in view of the fact that it would shape regional, spatial and economic strategies, county development plans and the planning decisions of local authorities and An Bord Pleanála. I could not agree more. In his PowerPoint presentation on 9 November 2016, he committed to same again. It is, therefore, crystal clear that there was a requirement, which I brought forward in the legislation, to ensure there would be a vote in this House and in Seanad Éireann on the national planning framework.

It seems the Tánaiste got this, although he can no longer remember it, but then the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, came along and did not get it. He seemed motivated to forget about this commitment once he entered the Custom House. Why is that the case? The answer, I believe, is quite simple. This Government could not guarantee that it would win the subsequent vote on the national planning framework, it had forgotten to include it in the confidence and supply agreement with Fianna Fáil and it would hardly countenance losing such a critical vote and the consequent golden public relations opportunity which has now been seized with such fanfare. This is especially the case now that the Government has begun linking the new framework with the capital spending plan. There was no intention to link the national planning framework and the capital plan originally. The Taoiseach inadvertently admitted this last week. The capital plan was meant to be launched some time ago, he said - over six months ago. However, it was so far behind schedule that the Government now thought it would look politically mature to put it all together and pretend this was planned all along. It was not. By linking the two plans, there was no way, this Government felt, in all the confusion it would create, that the Opposition could come into the House and vote against €115 billion in capital spending. It would be political suicide to do so. The Taoiseach again let the cat out of the bag last week when he said the Opposition was terrified of the then imminent announcement of the plans. What is terrifying is for the Government, particularly the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to stake his political future on doing something that I, and all my colleagues who sat beside me at the Cabinet table, believe is legally unsound. All of us in the Labour Party have the same view.

Trust me, this will come back to haunt the Government and the Minister. There is absolutely no 100% sound statutory legislation underpinning this national framework. I do not say this lightly but I do want it recorded in this forum that that is my prediction. Some parts of the planning code require planning authorities to have regard to the National Spatial Strategy 2002-2020, published by the then Government on 28 November 2002. Other provisions require the authorities to have regard to the national spatial strategy "or any document published by the Government which amends or replaces that Strategy". The Government, in its publication, did not even link this framework to that spatial strategy. The Government did not say it repealed or abrogated it or that it was a new version of it, so it is not a replacement.

Eventually the Government will have to try to put this on a statutory footing somehow. The only way to do so is to subject it to votes and amendments on the floors of the Dáil and Seanad. I predict that this will have to happen. If the Government tries to push this through and bluff it, the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill is not the vehicle by means of which it can get a vote to justify the statutory process that is needed. I ask the House to imagine the scenario in which the Government will now be left. It will have to come before this House and ask us to pass the national planning framework and we will all look to change it in some way. I predict that the Government will have to do this because otherwise the plan is simply a vision of aspirations and thoughts. To look on the bright side, after the Government is forced to debate the framework in the Dáil - and it will be amended - it will at least have the fanfare of launching it all over again. Anyone worth his or her salt who walks into court to challenge this on the basis, say, of the ridiculous caps that are to be put on planning in different local authority areas will win. He or she will be able to quote one third of the members of the Government and what their views of it were at the time. He or she will be able to quote what I am saying now and the documents to which I have referred.

Aside from the obvious issue of not having any statutory footing, there are two other reasons why I believe this plan is legally flawed due to the process adopted. The legislation commits the Government to submit an environmental report as part of the approval to the Oireachtas. This has not been done. A strategic environmental assessment, SEA, scoping exercise is not sufficient. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in its submission in respect of this plan said this had to be on a statutory footing. I suggest that the officials and the Minister read the submission. There is also the most basic and obvious reason why this will fall legally. As far as public consultation is concerned, there has been no truthful engagement in respect of this plan during the final leg of its journey. The final national planning framework is a very different version to the one that was released a few months ago. The fundamentals of it have changed. For example, the tiered nature of picking some towns over others for special status is completely new. What have the people of Tullamore, Mullingar or Nenagh to say about this? We will never know because they have not been consulted.

The Minister and the Government are in big trouble on the national planning framework, and I do not say this lightly. The capital plan is tied with the framework so, by bringing them together, the Government has jeopardised both.

I believe they should be together but only after the legislation is passed and the national planning framework is voted on, which was my intention when I brought forward the legislation in the first place. For perceived political advantage reasons the Government has jeopardised them both. The spatial strategy of 2002 was stroke politics, but in fairness to Fianna Fáil in typical format at least we could see it coming at us. This strategy and plan is underhand, cynical, unethical, legally unsound and wrong. I can tell the Government out straight that anyone in opposition, and particularly we in the Labour Party, will not and cannot be bound by it.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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On a point of order, I remember standing here back in 2013 when Deputy Kelly was Minister and he and his colleagues destroyed our local democracy and abolished the town councils.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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That is not at point of order.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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We had no vote on it either.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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That is not a point of order.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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We had no vote on it.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Okay, it is not a point of order.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Now he wants to have his cake and eat it.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Please Deputy, it is not a point of order.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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He did not have a vote on it either.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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It is not a point of order. Can we move on?

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Why is it not a point of order?

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Because it is not.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Well I believe it is. We cannot have this crying by the Labour Party-----

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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It may be a point of information but it is not a point of order. Deputy please, we need to move on.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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-----when it did more damage to rural Ireland than Cromwell.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Please Deputy, we will be calling you in a little while.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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It banished town councils. It banished the Leader programme and now it is going around the country holding meetings and trying to regain its popularity.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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We will be calling the Deputy in a little while and he can make his points. Deputy please resume your seat. I call Deputy Bríd Smith, who is sharing time with Deputy Mick Barry.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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You are only jealous.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Jealous of what?

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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You did not even turn up at the council meetings to discuss it.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputies, will you please give way?

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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You could not even be bothered to turn up at town council meetings to discuss it.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Give way to Deputy Smith please.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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You were the Minister for spin and you are still spinning.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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You did not turn up at it. Check the record.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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You were not a Minister long enough to do anything.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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I will point it out to you.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputies, please.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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Come on lads, try to pull together.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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That is Tipperary politics for you.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It is the worst form of politics here, Tipperary politics, male chauvinist politics and the whole nine yards.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Excuse me.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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As a socialist, I support the idea of a national development plan. I am a strong advocate of the idea of democratically and rationally decided plans in which we decide where to build, what to build, how to build and what to produce so the needs of our citizens are met. This is the definition of a plan for development for the country. I was delighted to read that Project Ireland 2040 emphasises social outcomes and values ahead of economic targets. On one level, the very fact the Government has produced a 22 year plan is a tacit acknowledgement that the free market and allowing the private sector to rule and decide everything does not produce wholesome outcomes. It is an acknowledgement that the State has a role in planning and that is good. It acknowledges what is good and what is needed in our country and that everything cannot be left to the whims of the market and the corporations in the pursuit of profits. Except, of course, this is not a 22 year plan and it is not anything remotely new or visionary. It is a repackaged bundle of previously announced capital programmes wrapped in a reheated aspirational framework. It is akin to a scene from "Groundhog Day" that we seem destined to repeat in this country again and again under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

I want to plagiarise Gene Kerrigan's article from the weekend in the Sunday Independent. He stated Project Ireland 2040:

is a 20-year strategy designed to enable every place in the country to reach its potential, no matter what its size or location. It recognises that the various regions of the country have different roles... It is about making regions competitive according to their strengths and not against one another; about ensuring a high quality urban environment, as well as vibrant rural areas.

Except, as Gene Kerrigan points out, this is not a quote from Project Ireland 2040, but from the now forgotten - except this discussion keeps raising it - national spatial strategy of 2002 under Fianna Fáil, the huge success of which can still be seen on our streets, in our congested towns and cities, in our ghost estates, in the schemes built on floodplains, in pyrite-riddled houses and in once-off housing well away from any services such as schools or public transport.

Project Ireland 2040 follows in a long tradition of failed and non-existent plans, where aspirations are sacrificed at the first resistance from the market or in the interests of the financial elites. Will Project Ireland 2040 be different? It is different mostly by its scale and by the scale of public money used to announce and publicise it. We cannot go to the cinema or switch on the television or radio without seeing what is, in effect, a general election broadcast for Fine Gael, promising to cure all of our ills by 2040. We will have three new hospitals, urban and rural regeneration worth €3 billion, new motorways, new metros and tramlines all by 2040.

We cannot deal with the trolley crisis we have now, which has worsened and developed over the seven years Fine Gael has been in government. We cannot deal with a housing crisis that sees tens of thousands of children and adults homeless and 100,000 in housing need. We cannot bring funding for our public transport services back to the levels they were at before the crisis. We cannot even build a proper city in Dublin because everything we do means it gets more and more congested. However, according to the plan, we will build a shiny city overlooking the Atlantic, which will be the envy of the best northern European cities with great transport, great schools, great health services and a natural environment to be wondered at. This will not happen. It is a fraud and a fantasy and, to quote the song written by the famous migrant worker in America who organised migrant workers to seek their rights, Joe Hill, we will get pie in the sky.

From the day of your birth

It's bread and water here on earth...

But there'll be pie in the sky

By and by when I die

This is exactly what we are getting with the plan.

The greatest con of the plan is also its most ironic. Coming just months after the collapse of Carillion in Britain, this plan is essentially a proposal not just for public private partnerships but a version of public private partnerships on steroids. In 2015, the Government enacted a measure to ensure no Department spent more than 10% of its budget on public private partnership. While making a huge chunk of public infrastructure and services reliant on private finance at least there was some limit to this type of disaster and some limit to the type of Carillion we might see. This will be gone with the plan. The plan will mean a feeding frenzy for public private partnerships and private financial speculation. It will hold key public assets and goods to ransom. Assets and goods we need for our citizens will effectively be in the hands of private companies and financial interests. We know from experience here and internationally this costs the State multiples more than if it were to borrow to build the projects and fund them directly itself. One report suggests the capital costs of a typical public private partnership or private finance initiative costs 8%, double of the long-term Government borrowing rate of 4% and that the outcome in terms of quality, design and accountability of projects built by the State is much better than it is in a public private partnership or private finance initiative.

Far from the rhetoric of public private partnerships transferring the financial risk from the State to the private sector, the reality is the State takes all of the risks and pays more for private finance. A 2013 study found there is no strong evidence to suggest public private partnerships have delivered better value for taxpayer's money. There is evidence to the contrary, and yet effectively this entire plan is based on the Godzilla of all public private partnerships. We will have more M50 toll disasters, more collapsed projects such as the regeneration of O'Devaney Gardens and St. Michael's estate and more desperately needed homes and schools hanging in the balance dependent on the machinations of private companies such as Carillion, except the scale will be bigger than ever before. In the years ahead, our national development will be dictated more and more by the needs and profit opportunities of bankers and developers. The plan and its various projects will not be decided by the regional planning forums and least of all by the needs of the people. It will be decided on the needs of bankers and developers.

The public homes that our citizens need will be built when the finance the private sector wants to use is found. This will be dictated not by the needs of the people who live in this country, or by what is good, rational and environmentally sound, but by the profit margin these companies need and the profits they want. We are told a new national regeneration development agency has been set up to manage public sites and will be given compulsory purchase powers if private sites are needed for housing. However, these powers already exist and there are legislative means to use a compulsory purchase order to obtain land. What we do not have is the political will to do so. We do not have a Government that is willing to declare housing a national emergency and to build the homes needed. I find it unlikely that a new agency will find the political will to take the measures needed, and our fear is this agency will do whatever the market, in the shape of developers and bankers, dictates and not what is contained in the plan. Therefore, we repeat that we call it fraud and a fantasy. The best of luck with it, but it is completely dependent on the whims of the market, financiers, developers and bankers and this is a flaw. This is not planning, it is fantasy.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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I welcome the fact we are having this debate. Last week we had a multiplicity of announcements with great crash and thunder. This evening we have an opportunity to drill down and ask some pertinent questions about the real content of this plan, to see if it is fit for purpose and discuss alternative approaches.

I want to look at the plan under a number of headings, including housing; public private partnerships, PPPs; climate change; public transport; some of the proposals relating to the area that I represent in Cork; and the need for real socialist planning.

One of the stark deficiencies in the national planning framework is the scant reference and attention given to our need for far more public housing. The unmet housing need in the State today is in fact a multiple of the figure or more than 100,000 currently on local authority housing lists. For a start, those on housing assistance payments, HAP, and therefore in the thrall of private landlords, are taken off the list, even though their fundamental housing needs have not been securely met. However, these numbers in turn are dwarfed by the number of people, estimated to be in excess of 300,000, who have a housing need, cannot afford to buy in the open market and are excluded from applying for public housing. The planing framework document says that the provision by Government of housing support for those unable to provide for accommodation from their own resources is a key social policy. It does not seem to be a key social policy at the moment, or if it is, it is in name only. From the perspective of the locked out generation, just as much for those languishing for up to 15 years on allocation lists, it certainly does not seem like a key social policy. The short-term target for all housing construction in the document is between 30,000 and 35,000 units, which is not enough. To clear the backlog of unmet housing need we need State-led planning and construction to increase that by at least a factor of three.

I recommend to the Government and to every Deputy in this House an article in last week's Dublin Inquirerby the academics Mick Byrne, Michelle Norris and Anna Carnegie, entitled "Our Housing Policy is Built on a False and Dangerous Premise". This article picks apart the clichés about tenure mix. We hear a lot about tenure mix in Project Ireland 2040. These clichés which come from the political establishment are in reality a coded way of saying this Government has no intention of building enough public housing to cater for the existing lists, never mind the broader current and future public housing need.

We cannot resolve this crisis if we do not aspire to build and rebuild working-class communities on a scale we have not seen since the 1970s at least. The article points out that the problems associated with some working-class communities are to be located in wider capitalism, citing factors like industrialisation. The authors correctly point in the direction of achieving mixed tenure, in other words, effectively bringing all strata of the working and middle classes together by lifting the low income thresholds for social housing.

I must also address the issue of public private partnerships. With all the crash and thunder of the new announcements last week, the Government hoped that we would not notice that a new policy was being sneaked in through the back door. The framework includes a change of policy emanating from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe's Department. That Department wants to ramp up the role of PPPs beyond the previous cap of 10% of the capital budget. This is quite incredible, coming mere weeks after the disaster of the Carillon collapse in Britain. We have seen the effect this is having and has had in this country. There is now a major international debate about the value and wisdom of the PPP model. It does not deliver the goods, it delivers the goods more at greater expense than other approaches and in many cases it is very bad for workers' rights. What is the response of the Government? It does not just stick with PPPs, it ramps them up hugely.

I cannot think of anything that better demonstrates this Government's abject worship of the capitalist market at the expense of ordinary people. The 2040 plan would tie us into PPPs not just for motorways, but for projects building institutes of technology and the upgrade of 90 community nursing homes. It cannot be contested by the Minister that PPP deals, some of which last 40 years and therefore two generations, come at a greater cost to the public purse. Yes, the fiscal rules that he campaigned for and supports conveniently lead us to the door of these PPP arrangements, but it is time to call a halt. I will make some points about the alternative to this later in my remarks.

On the issue of climate change, the Government's record is in sharp contrast to the aspirations of ordinary people. What is the Government's record? Ireland is the worst performing country in Europe in the action it is taking. The State dropped 28 places last year and ranked 49th out of 59 according to the 2018 Climate Change Performance Index. Ireland is missing its EU 2020 emission reduction targets. We also produce highest volume of emissions per person in Europe, and the eighth highest in the world. Contrast that with the Citizens' Assembly held last November, where 98% of members recommended putting climate change at the centre of Irish policy making. This shows widespread support for action on environmental issues by the general public. A full 100% of members recommended that the State should take a leadership role and assume responsibility for adapting existing structures. I do not have time to go into all of the options available to the State to improve its record greatly on climate change, so I will deal with one, the question of public transport.

Successive Governments, led by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, have a rotten record on investment in public transport. The amount of money going into Dublin Bus, Iarnród Éireann and Bus Éireann is less than it was ten years ago. More than 1.2 million commuters travel to work by car. There is massive scope to drastically increase public transport use, but only by proper investment. For example, German railway transport gets roughly nine times the amount of current subvention per head of population that Irish Rail does. That is not including capital investment. Trying to balance the books on the back of public transport workers will not improve the quality of public transport. It will make it worse. That is why we need a properly funded public transport system. Irish Rail carries up to 155,000 passengers a day. In 2016, Irish Rail carried 43 million passengers. All of this plays a role in the creation of wealth in society. With increases in intercity and DART routes, efficient, reliable and affordable public transport is a key requirement for working people across the State. Simply returning the 2018 public service obligation to 2010 levels would see €73 million returned to Irish Rail. Reinstating the subvention taken from Irish rail since 2008 would see €730 million returned. Compare that to the fines of €610 million facing the State for missing CO₂emissions targets in 2020. This funding could begin to transform public transport services radically in this country. Investment in environmentally friendly infrastructure and modernisation would dramatically reduce car numbers in city centres, while also reskilling thousands of workers. A serious turn to investment in services through State subvention could see fares dramatically reduced and usage dramatically increased.

We calculate that with a €500 million investment, fares could be reduced by half, which would open to the door to a massive turn away from the car to public transport services. The Public Services International Research Unit has reported on the growing trend in municipalities and cities throughout Europe towards taking transport services back into public control as the failures of the private model and the efficiencies of public ownership become apparent through the state's ability to borrow and invest, control quality and favourable conditions for workers and commuters. In the UK, 76% of those surveyed, according to recent polls, support the renationalisation of transport. It would be enormously popular in this country to back public transport with major investment funded through a steeply progressive taxation system.

There are 171 references in this 158-page document to the word "sustainable", yet genuinely sustainable policies are noticeably absent from it.

I refer to proposals in Project Ireland 2040 relating to Cork city, including road projects, the event centre, light rail and a tidal barrier. Various road projects are mentioned in the document, including the Macroom bypass and the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick, which is significant. I am an advocate of switching funding in order that the majority of it goes towards public transport as opposed to roads but there is no doubt that a motorway linking Ireland's second and third cities is a necessity. It is a third world scenario not to have that. How will the road operate? The Sunday Business Postreported last Sunday that there will be an increased use of public private partnerships. It said, "This raises the prospect of tolling on new motorways such as the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick". I would like the Tánaiste, who is beating the drum in Cork on this issue, to answer whether the new motorway will be tolled. It should not be tolled and it is right that information in this regard should be put out there from the get-go.

The Cork event centre is badly needed for concerts and the like. As a member, I attended a meeting of Cork City Council in December 2014 when the funding proposals for this initiative were rolled out. I made the point that night that if we had a State construction company, it would deliver the project far better than the private sector or a public private partnership. I have been proven right in that regard. If a state construction company had taken on that project, it would be built or almost built by now, but not a single brick has been laid on the basis of the PPP model. How expensive it is proving to be for the taxpayer as well. The original plan was for a €50 million event centre with €20 million to be provided by the taxpayer. Now it seems that the Tánaiste has negotiated a deal for the same event centre costing €73 million, although the cinema has been taken out in favour of office space, with €30 million being provided by the taxpayer. Is €10 million being provided indirectly on top of that? The Irish Examiner reported last week that €10 million in State funding would be provided for so-called support infrastructure for the centre. What is that support infrastructure? This deal is shrouded in secrecy and people need to be told what exactly is going on. When this PPP is hammered out, who will control the building and the land? What is the State getting for its investment? Is it merely providing a donation to the private sector to do something that could have been done many years ago more quickly and for much less money, with the centre remaining in the ownership and control of the people?

The document refers to the much needed and long awaited northern ring road for the city. It says that a start will be made on that but I hope a middle and an ending will happen as well. Reference is also made to a feasibility study for light rail. Did the Minister of State ever hear of the land use and transportation survey, LUTS, which was a survey of transportation needs in Cork in the late 1970s? That was a feasibility study, which recommended light rail. We are 40 years on and we need feasibly studies matched quickly with funding.

There is not even provision for a feasibility study, let alone a project, when it comes to a tidal barrier and this tracks back to my earlier point on climate change. World renowned expert, Professor Robert Devoy of University College Cork, says that a tidal barrier is a necessity for Cork and will become even more of a necessity as time goes by as we experience rising sea levels caused by global warming. The OPW says a barrier would cost €1 billion. People who are well placed say that is not true. HR Wallingford, an international engineering and hydraulics company, recently said it could be done for €140 million. That would be cheaper and more acceptable to the people of Cork, particularly those in the city centre, than the clumsy and not very people friendly flood defence plan being put in place by the OPW. I reiterate my call for funding to be put aside for a tidal barrier. It will be needed sooner or later and now would be the best time to provide it.

I am in favour of rational planning in respect of the resources within society. I believe that such an approach does not sit well alongside the anarchy of the capitalist market. If Ministers want to see in real terms what I mean by that, they should look at the history of this country over the past ten to 20 years. The grand plans for infrastructure, including spatial strategies, and development which were the equivalent of Project Ireland 2040 in the early 21st century were put in place in 2000 and 2006 and then we had the global economic crash, the worst since the 1930s. That did not just mean the vast bulk of the projects were put on the long finger but progress that had been made during the imperious Celtic tiger period was pushed back because of cutbacks and austerity.

There is a long history in this country of great plans and great visions being ruined and wrecked by the vagaries of the capitalist market, the anarchy of the capitalist market and the inevitability which is built into the capitalist market, both internationally and in Ireland, of booms and slumps which cut across the potential for rational, serious planning of the economy and of our resources.

The projects announced last week, and others such as the Cork tidal barrier, can only be delivered soundly and securely by a society which takes its resources and then plans in a rational way. It will not happen on the basis of private ownership for profit, but can only happen by taking the main levers of wealth in society into public hands and democratically controlling them for the benefit of each and every member of society. There needs to be a break with the policies of the capitalist markets and a new, democratic and socialist society organised and planned for the interests of the majority or people, rather than the profits of an elite few.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Mick Wallace will share time with Deputies Clare Daly, Catherine Connolly and Thomas Pringle.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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I had the pleasure of reading the plan over the weekend. It was tough going and there was a lot of repetition in it. I would probably have been better off reading some real fiction. The idea of long-term planning makes sense as we are all too aware that just about every Government in the history of the State has worked from election to election, with the vested interests of politicians in their own areas overriding the national interest. It is to be welcomed that the Government is taking a long-term view of where we are going and how we are going to spend our money in the next 22 years.

I found what I read to be high on aspiration but I do not see a lot of change. I welcome a plan which looks years ahead but I would have expected more on rail. I had an argument with someone in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport about a year ago about increasing the use of rail but I was told that, in the short term, it was not economically viable and one would have to look into the very long term to see a serious return on investment. I would have thought a long-term plan such as Project 2040 would have been kinder to the idea of rail.

I was amused by the last Deputy to speak, who wants rail before road except for in Cork. That is part of the problem we have in here. On "Morning Ireland" last week, Dr. Edgar Morgenroth said the Cork-Limerick road was not actually a great idea, and he was involved in the early stages of designing that plan. He said the original draft plan envisaged significant growth of the second tier cities, which is what is needed to anchor the economic activity in the weaker regions. He said that without big cities in the regions, those areas that are not close to Dublin are simply going to continue to do quite badly, and that is what they have been doing. He said that, in order to achieve this, it was important to put the infrastructure into the cities, not between them. We have built a lot of road in Ireland but we have not built a lot of rail. I was on a train from Turin to Milan at the weekend and it took 45 minutes, even though it is nearly as far as Dublin is from Cork. Rail is absolutely wonderful to use and one can get to Milan or Turin for €10.50, though it costs up to €15 for the faster train and it is a bit more if one does not book in good time.

Rail would be fantastic in this country. It is obviously not as economically viable as in a country with 30 million or 60 million people but just because we live on a small island and have a small population, we should not reject it. It is the way forward and if we were serious about addressing climate change we would do it. I found Project 2040 light on the issue of climate change and I do not see us taking the challenges seriously enough. We are talking about using biomass to supply energy instead of coal and turf but there are problems with biomass too and it will not tick the boxes over a period of time. The Government is not taking climate change seriously and if it does not address it in a plan which looks 22 years into the future, it is particularly worrying.

We have talked about housing here for so long that people are tired listening but that has not been addressed either. We are not addressing how we supply housing. Housing is unaffordable for too many people and I do not see any measures from the Government to address it. It will eventually deal with the supply element but I do not see it dealing with affordability. I do not accept that houses should be twice as dear in Ireland as they are in western Europe. It has become too big a problem for too many people as they try to put a roof over their heads. Some institutions have a cartel, particularly in Dublin, and since REITs came in we have turned a blind eye to NAMA selling all its property to them for peanuts. We took this issue up with the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, who spoke of the professional landlord taking over the market but it was always going to end in tears. The average rent for a two-bed apartment in Dublin is close to €2,000 per month, which is just nonsense. People cannot afford it and I do not see any proactive measures to tackle it. I have looked at every housing measure brought in by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government and the current Government and they are ignoring the fundamentals. They are sowing the seeds for the next crash, which is inevitable given the approach being taken.

Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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State-led strategic development is the only way forward for any society that wants to advance itself. Some of the initiatives taken by this State in the early years, particularly the 1930s when resources were far more scant than they are now, showed vision and we should be really embarrassed with what we are putting forward now in comparison. We developed a national airline and transatlantic flights. We picked Shannon for a focal point for regional development, rather than what it is now, namely, a US military air base with nothing. We had the electrification of the country, for which the semi-State ESB linked up with Siemens in Germany. They were so visionary that the talk was of people being fried in their beds, such was the electrical output that was envisaged.

Look where that got us. Look at that vision compared to what we have now. The reality is that Project Ireland 2040 is just a rehash and a repackaging of all the other plans and announcements we have had in the recent past. When we consider regional development and we see how Dublin is grinding to a halt because of the lack of a national plan, I do not see the solutions to the crisis in any part of this plan.

I shall give the example of metro north, the proposed route of which is located close to where I live. I have lost count but I think this is at least the sixth time in 17 years that metro north has been announced as some part of the capital or strategic plan. I remember when it was first announced. It was around the time my daughter started primary school. It was supposed to be finished by the time she started secondary school and I thought that would be great. It would be nice to be able to go into town and it would only be 22 minutes from Swords. My daughter is now in college in the Netherlands and she is never going to see that. When I have visited my daughter in the Netherlands, the trains come at 42 minutes past the hour and they depart. The next one is at 43 minutes past, or every 13 minutes. They have an absolutely integrated and powerful transport system. Metro north has been announced and announced, but nothing has been delivered. We have to make this point because Ireland's record with capital projects is so abysmal that I honestly believe that if the plan had contained an announcement regarding the world's biggest skyscraper in Athlone or a space station in Killybegs, nobody would have batted an eyelid because we are so used to these plans being announced but nothing really happening afterwards.

I remind the House that in 2005 the then Government published a ten-year plan for transport called Transport 21. I read over that again, in preparation for this debate, and I do not know if I should laugh or cry. Transport 21 said that metro north was supposed to be completed by 2012. It is now 2018 and it has not even been designed yet. That plan also proposed the joining of the Tallaght and Sandyford Luas lines in the city centre by 2008. Also in 2008, we were supposed to have a Tallaght to Citywest Luas extension, a Cork commuter rail service to Midleton, an Ennis to Athenry rail line and - I am not making this up - a rail station in St. Stephen's Green that would be to Dublin what Grand Central Station is to New York. All of these projects were to happen in 2008. Transport 21 promised us a metro west to be operational by 2012, the Luas to be extended all the way to Bray, trains that would run from Dublin to Dunboyne and Navan and an Ennis to Knock rail service. We were to have bold new DART services from the city centre to Hazelhatch in Kildare and Balbriggan on the northern line and in Maynooth. All the Dublin rail lines that I have just mentioned were announced in the National Transport Authority's Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area 2016-2035 and yet here we have them again in this plan. The main thing that all of these projects have in common is that none of them ever happened and that ground was not broken in respect of a single one. Let us bear this in mind when we look at Project Ireland 2040. It is a piece of paper. I am not being negative but experience has taught us that a lot of what is proposed will not happen. The maps with the proposed new rail lines for Dublin are the same maps that were in Transport 21, which was introduced 13 years ago. We are told that there are capital commitments in this plan, but there were capital commitments in the last plan also.

Where are we going with a lot of this? We do not have the time to develop this further but we do have to put it into its absolute context because a lot of money has been expended, but nothing has really been delivered in many cases. It was not just the Fine Gael-Labour Government; Fianna Fáil, the Independent Alliance, the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats were all in government when those plans were introduced. In the context of metro north, nothing has been delivered.

When I consider transport in the context of Project Ireland 2040, I come to the conclusion that the Government has given up entirely on the concept of sustainable regional transport in favour of roads, roads and more roads. This is even as we head towards climate catastrophe. National roads, ring roads, motorways and bypasses; we have them all. They are all in this plan. The 13 year old Transport 21, which was drawn up before the Paris Agreement on climate change, at least contained some plans for regional railways. Project Ireland 2040 is very weak in that regard. This is incredibly wrong and it is a backward step for sustainable transport. The plan refers airily to supporting a sustainable and economically efficient agriculture sector but does not mention the fact that Food Wise 2025 and Food Harvest 2020 are both predicated on increasing agricultural output, with the attendant increase in carbon emissions. Sustainable in this context really has nothing to do with climate and everything to do with profit.

I am very concerned that Project Ireland 2040 refers, in excited terms, to data centres. It refers to such centres as being international digital infrastructure. However, it does not contain an explanation as to how we might mitigate against the humongous energy demands and emissions to which these centres will give rise. We are informed that data centres will underpin Ireland's international position as a location for information and communication technology. Let us get real: data centres are server warehouses and nothing more. It is like saying that a warehouse containing car parts on the Longmile Road will underpin Ireland's position as a location for car manufacturing. It is absolute and utter nonsense. Data centres are not part of our silicon future. They will actually place a huge drain on our natural energy resources. At full capacity, the first phase of the Athenry plant will hoover up some 30 MW of power, the same amount needed for 26,000 homes. Over time, this will rise to 240 MW. This is just the requirements of one data centre. It is absolutely frightening. I do not have time to further develop the points but this plan is heavy on spin and light on detail.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Ba mhaith liom a bheith dearfach ach tá sé thar a bheith deacair. Tá an próiseas seo ag dul ar aghaidh ó 2015 agus tá sé anois trí bliana ina dhiadh sin. Ba mhaith liom a bheith dearfach agus na rudaí dearfacha sa cháipéis a aithint ach tá sé léite agam. Tá an plean léite agam freisin. Tiocfaidh mé ar ais. I dtús báire, this plan acknowledges that the previous spatial plan failed and that it did so for a number of reasons. The plan acknowledges that we want to move away from development that is led by developers. I really welcome this. The plan acknowledges that the one which preceded it failed for a number of reasons including: a decentralisation programme that did not work; the absence of a statutory basis for the previous plan; and the fact that there were winners and losers. This plan has no winners or losers.

It is difficult not to be cynical, particularly in view of the fact that the previous plan had no statutory basis and that this one also has no such basis. I rarely find myself in agreement with Deputy Kelly but he made some valid points in respect of the new plan. The manner of its publication last Friday beggars belief. Although the additions are welcome, the changes in recent weeks clearly undermine the process that has been going on for three years. That Members did not receive copies of the plan and were obliged to download it from the Internet tells a story about the Government's regard for the Dáil and for new politics. The most important aspect of all of this is that the plan comes in the wake of the Flood tribunal, which later became the Mahon tribunal. I wish to quote paragraph 1.02 of that tribunal's report, which states:

Throughout that period, [the 1980s to the 1990s] corruption in Irish political life was both endemic and systemic. It affected every level of Government from some holders of top ministerial offices to some local councillors and its existence [corruption] was widely known and widely tolerated.

I only have a few minutes remaining but I would say to the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, that it is worth reading the rest of paragraph 1.02.

Paragraph 1.03 states:

The Tribunal is aware that the corruption exposed by it, and by other Tribunals of Inquiry, has seriously undermined the public's faith in democracy and in particular, in its public officials, whether elected or appointed.

On foot of the tribunal's report, we supposedly learned lessons. We learned from the failure of the spatial strategy and we learned to plan for the future up to 2040. It was a great learning period. The Government then went ahead last Friday and published the plan, without a statutory basis and without discussion in the Dáil. This really does not help confidence.

6 o’clock

Chomh maith leis sin, níl cóip Ghaeilge le fáil. Tá sé náireach nach bhfuil cóip Ghaeilge le fáil ach, níos measa ná sin, tá dualgais an Rialtais faoi Acht na dTeangacha Oifigiúla 2003 sáraithe aige. Tá sé de dhualgas ar an Rialtas faoi alt 10 den Acht cóip i nGaeilge a chur ar fáil ag an am céanna a chuireann sé cóip i mBéarla ar fáil. Again, the Government has failed, not miserably, but it has failed in its legal obligations to give us an Irish version at the very same time it gives us an English version. As it is not underpinning this planning framework with legislation and is not complying with its existing obligations under legislation, it is very difficult to be positive.

Notwithstanding that, there are some good things in the plan in the area of long-term planning and in the emphasis on developing the other cities. The plan names five cities - and I am happy to see they include Galway - to balance the unsustainable overdevelopment of Dublin. I welcome that. I also welcome the Government's statement that it will transition to a low-carbon and climate-resistant society and its many uses of the word "sustainable", which one of my colleagues has already mentioned. It is a wonderful document in that way. However, when one reads the small print, and my weekend and the last few days were spoiled by doing so, one sees a complete absence of vision, a move towards the privatisation of all our services and an utter failure to recognise the crisis we have in housing.

In the chapter on Galway, one reads about problems with choice and affordability. It is way beyond choice and affordability. It is a major crisis in which 13,000 people are on a waiting list. There is absolutely no recognition of that in the plan. Public private partnerships are given a place of adoration. I sit on the Committee of Public Accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General has repeatedly pointed out to us that, without allowing myself to exaggerate, there is a serious deficiency in the post-evaluation of public private partnerships after five years. We are told one of the reasons for this is that so doing would reveal commercially sensitive information. The Government is going further down the route of public private partnerships with absolutely no evaluation of whether they are good value for money.

There is a very good point in the plan about building more than 50% of all future developments in Galway city on brownfield sites. I absolutely welcome that. We have Ceannt Station, the docks and other very important public lands. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, agreed with me the last day when I said that development in Galway is, as usual, developer-led. Despite this lovely document, although he said he rarely agreed with me, he fully agreed with me when I talked about developer-led development in Galway without a master plan for our public lands. That is what is happening. By the time some of this plan is to be implemented, the public lands will have been compromised.

In addition, the Government is going down the route of selling off our public lands in respect of public housing. The public housing provision the Government talks about is the provision of the housing assistance payment, HAP. I have a fundamental problem with that. The Government is artificially bolstering the market all the time with its housing policy. On Galway, and to stick with the positive, the Government wants most development to happen within the city, which I welcome. However, the same plan includes an outer ring road. It is to cost up to €600 million. It must be most expensive road in the whole of the world at more than €30 million per kilometre. It will draw the development out, not in. There is a complete mismatch in this policy. There are many more things in the plan which I would love the opportunity to go into in a positive way because we only get one chance at building our vision for the future, but my time is up.

Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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Much of the fanfare surrounding the publication of Project Ireland 2040 has fallen flat. That is because it is an insincere attempt by this Government to promote itself and has become, in effect, an extremely expensive publicity stunt. While there has been a lot of commentary about moving away from local politics in the drafting of this national policy, I have no shame in stating the case for County Donegal or in stating I believe more should have been offered in the drafting of the national development plan.

Donegal has persistently been sidelined in national policy and as a result suffers from chronic underinvestment and unbalanced regional growth. Project Ireland 2040 calls itself futuristic because it sets out development in Ireland for the next generation. The contents of Project Ireland 2040, however, are really projects which should have been carried out ten years ago, not in ten years' time. We should be seeing this money within the next few years because we are so behind economically and in terms of infrastructure in this country thanks to the austerity policies pushed through by Fine Gael and Labour. It is also an intensely commercially-led high-tech plan, which leaves little room for rural development or for projects which have a social value element to them. What is evident in Project Ireland 2040 is that Donegal can expect to be forgotten for another generation thanks to the national development plan once again continuing the trend of excluding the needs of Donegal and rural Ireland from national policy.

The Government has been keeping its cards close to its chest in terms of specific county-by-county projects. What I do see for County Donegal is really quite comical, particularly the commentary on the announcement of some projects in Donegal, namely, that Project Ireland 2040 will be a game-changer. At least Donegal's situation is different from that of Dublin and Galway in respect of their railway developments because the plan announces projects for Donegal that have already started and that are almost finished. At least we know we are getting these projects because they are nearly complete anyway.

This plan is anything but a game-changer for Donegal. Most of the projects have already been announced and, in some cases, projects are being announced which are very near completion. I have heard and read the figure of 179 being bandied about in terms of the number of projects in the plan which have previously been announced. It is baffling to think the Government thought it could get away with promising future projects that are already nearing completion. For example, the Donegal Bay sewage scheme servicing Bundoran, Killybegs and Glencolumbkille is approximately 90% complete but will be rolled out in this plan. The N56 from Glenties to Lettermacaward is almost half complete, but it will also be rolled out under this plan. The Ballybofey bypass has been on the cards for years and the announcement today does nothing to make it a reality. The reference to radiology services for Letterkenny University Hospital actually relates to refurbishment money going back to the flooding in 2011. On the State-owned harbour in my native town of Killybegs, €5 million of the almost €8 million which has been announced relates to previously announced works. I have tabled a question to the Minister on this issue because it was recently announced in my constituency that Killybegs harbour was to receive nearly €8 million when it appears that only €3 million is actually new money and that the rest is tied up in contractual commitments going back a number of years.

I must also laugh at the statement on broadband and the claim that the roll-out will be expedited. Was this included in the draft plan prior to the scandal surrounding Eir pulling out of the tendering process? If this is to be achieved the Government will have to play a lot of catch-up. There is nowhere near the capacity to develop this process given the specific delays which the plan has experienced. Are Departments even talking to each other? This plan was only published on Friday and yet does not include any of that in it.

The Government is sending out a contradictory message here with large sums of money being allocated to road upgrades while the local authority has been rejecting applications for local improvement scheme payments across Donegal. I have been holding a number of emergency clinics to help people to set up their appeals. It would have been wise for the Government to have provided sufficient funding for the ongoing needs of road users at a local level as well as announcing grand projects. Why I am talking about roads when everybody else in the country is talking about railways? It is because we do not have any railways and never will. We do not have roads and probably will not have roads in the future either. On my 160-mile journey home from here, I drive on a motorway for 20 miles. We will not have a railway. We would love to have a railway. Indeed, there was a railway station in my own town of Killybegs but it was closed in 1963. The railway was abolished. The whole county of Donegal was well served by the railway which was taken out by previous Governments. We cannot expect to have any railway in the future.

This brings me to another problematic aspect of Project Ireland 2040. The plan is very top-heavy and primarily focuses on developing Letterkenny while the west and south west of the county remain largely absent. Not only will this kind of development place a lot of emphasis on one urban centre, but it will ensure increasing population growth in Letterkenny, as people continue to migrate from rural villages, encouraging even more depopulation. I spoke on the issue of depopulation already today with the Minister, Deputy Ring, who seemed to think that everything was fine and rosy in rural Ireland. I highlighted the plague of depopulation in Donegal, which is experiencing the highest rate of depopulation in the country. In fact, only two other counties have experienced depopulation, while the rest of the country has seen an increase in population. That is because everybody is moving from Donegal to work in Dublin. The Minister made much of the fact that the live register in Donegal had declined by more than 9,000 in recent years. He forgot to mention that only 2,000 jobs had been created despite the live register declining by 9,000. That is because these people are living in Australia, England, America, Dublin and places like that.

It is also a myth that much more development can be carried out in Letterkenny. Letterkenny is an absolute disaster in terms of planning and everything else. It will not be able to take the population that would be there unless those issues are dealt with straight away. The north west is heading in the opposite direction to the rest of the country. Project Ireland 2040 will only entrench it further. While it does contain a new rural regeneration fund of €1 billion to support rural renewal and reduce population decline, it is very scant on detail. It remains to be seen how much of this will be targeted at county level. It will probably be announced in the next plan, 20 years from now.

We should be seeing equal consideration for the development of urban centres and rural villages. We need to provide funding and supports for rural villages to develop their own local economies, to bring in local employment and develop as sustainable, vibrant places to live. Much of job creation will depend on broadband roll-out, of course, but in the meantime it is about accessing proper supports and structures that can reverse the population trend. Ultimately, we need to see a reversal of the damaging Fine Gael policies and the legacy left behind by the Labour Party, which have encouraged the retreat of rural services. The retreat of rural services is a blight on rural Ireland and has spread to the private sector too, as small towns like Ardara are now left with no banking facilities at all. I have also been carrying out a business survey across Donegal, talking to businesses, who generally seem to be the only people the Government actually listens to. The response has been very good so far but what is alarming from them is the level of anxiety regarding the continued trend of depopulation and the retreat of rural services. Project Ireland 2040 was an opportunity for a targeted approach with both urban and rural aspects side by side in equal measure and in symbiosis, not in direct competition with each other.

I would like to go on and talk about the cross-Border element and Brexit. The document seems to suggest that Brexit is not happening, which is good news for all of us in Donegal because the only development in the plan for Donegal is cross-Border between Letterkenny and Derry. Hopefully Brexit will not happen and that can go ahead. It seems to be just a sop that was thrown in at the last minute to satisfy us.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I am sharing my time with Deputy Danny Healy-Rae. I will take 20 minutes and Deputy Healy-Rae will take ten.

I am delighted to be able to speak this evening on the wonderful aims and big announcements. When I opened the national development plan and looked for references to Tipperary, I found just two instances despite it being the sixth largest county in the State. One was on a map of Ireland and the other was on the Irish Bioeconomy Foundation in Tipperary. That was it. Last night when I looked through it again, on page 40 I saw a picture of four cailíní in Clonmel a couple of years ago ag rince seit ar an tsráid, on the street. As my daughter was included in the picture as well, I had better declare that in case they say I have an interest and did not declare it.

Things were slightly better when I researched the national planning framework document and found 16 references to Tipperary. However, four were simply for photos and another one was a reference to Tipperary on a map of Ireland. The rest of the references mainly referred to the excellent work of Tipperary Energy Agency, which is internationally recognised and I recognise that myself. It is leading research and delivering community initiatives such as SuperHomes, Better Energy Communities, Insulate Tipp etc. I salute them and the work they do and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, as well. Tipperary is home to Cloughjordan ecovillage and Templederry community wind farm, which I 100% support.

There are some positives. As part of the capital investment plan, South Tipperary General Hospital, which was formerly known as St. Joseph's - I still affectionately call it St. Joseph's although somebody decided to change it - received €3.2 million for the provision of a new outpatient clinic. The total investment in South Tipperary General Hospital amounts to just under €50 million but again this has been announced and re-announced and recycled.

Looking to the future and 2040, Tipperary County Council in a submission to the national planning framework developed several key strategic aims that included strong prosperous towns which are vibrant and viable, economically self-sufficient and quality places to live and work. That is not happening. Our towns are being denuded. We saw it today when my colleague, Deputy Danny Healy-Rae found that only three towns in County Kerry can even avail of grants for the upgrading of semi-derelict houses to house people. He was told by the Minister of State's boss, the Taoiseach, that it was not true but it is what we are being told on the ground.

There is a lot of spin coming out of Government Buildings, especially with the Taoiseach's new €5 million spinning machine. The document refers to revitalised attractive villages providing local services and employment opportunities for sectors of the community. That is just literally aspirational. We all know the villages. They are dying on their feet. The Government will not allow any development and many of them have not got sewerage schemes, as was also advanced today by Deputy Danny Healy-Rae. I refer to "A county which is delivering effective regional development through co-operation and collaboration with its partners in the Southern Region." Finally, there is reference to "a connected county with excellent strategic, road and rail infrastructure." I am sorry for laughing but I have to laugh. The people who wrote this must have never left Dublin 4. As Deputy Pringle just said and as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle said himself, this is just dóchas at best. Unfortunately however, there is almost next to nothing in Project Ireland 2040 that will escalate the delivery of all those aims. Indeed if Tipperary does benefit through either of the two strands, the national planning framework, NPF, or the national development plan, NDP, it will almost be by accident rather than by design.

I have to stray a small bit with the indulgence of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I was in here for nine minutes this evening to hear the contribution of the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, or AK47 as we used to call him. I heard him and heard the double standards, after the ruin he brought on our country with his Labour Party in the last Government, and then he has the cheek to attack this for not having been voted through. It was not voted through here, he is right there, but neither was the decision to abolish town councils and borough district councils. That was not voted through either, there was no vote on it in this House and he was a senior Minister in government that time. For him now to be latching on to this to try and reincarnate himself as some kind of a saviour of rural Ireland is just sickening to the people of Tipperary who I represent.

The national planning framework, we are told, aims to bring about balanced regional development with an expectation that the capital's economic dominance and expansion will grow at a slower rate in the next few years. Then there is the national development plan, which is to be rolled out over the course of ten years at a cost of €115 billion and which is aimed at upgrading State infrastructure. The public, and particularly the people of Tipperary will be forgiven for being sceptical about all of this. Why would we not be sceptical? Has the Government forgotten that we have already had almost six years of national and regional jobs strategies? What has come of these for rural Ireland in particular? Has the Government forgotten that so much of what it promised and announced in the national development plan was already announced in the plan to revitalise rural Ireland about which we have heard so much in recent times?

When the former Taoiseach, God be good to him and he is here with us and still alive, thank God, went out to Edgeworthstown - "The Four Roads to Glenamaddy" I called it - what he was not going to do? It was all on paper and spin but no delivery of anything with the country falling down around him still and it continued to fall down around him.

What about the national broadband plan? Where is that? We have more roll-outs than we have hot dinners and still nothing for rural Ireland. This project alone, if it fails to be rolled out quickly, will rapidly and decisively undermine any plans for industrial or commercial development in rural counties. We had the harsh weather last week with the bit of snow that is gone but is supposed to come back tonight and disappear again tomorrow. This this plan will be the same. The first ray of sunshine will melt it because anyone who wants to dig down and investigate it will know it as a combination of former things that were already announced, spin and regurgitation and an effort for Fine Gael to launch its election manifesto.

I wonder where the Independent Alliance is. It does not seem to be anywhere in this. All the Minister, Deputy Ross, is concerned about is locking up the people of rural Ireland if they allow their L-plate drivers go out on the road or cross the yard with a tractor or anything else. While I welcome the fact that roads like the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick will be built at the cost of €900 million, I need to inform the Minister that quite recently the chief executive of Tipperary County Council, Joe MacGrath, estimated that it would take €190 million just to repair and maintain the roads in much of Tipperary. Where are we going with €900 million for this road from Cork? Again the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, was on an early morning raid. He would have been great in the time of the Troubles if he was around, because of his dawn raids that he makes all the time. He went to Cork and announced this road prematurely. When I took up the phone to ring the Minister, Deputy Ross, several months ago now, it was the first he had heard of it and there was no money for it. What is going on? They are playing politics with the life and future of our country. We had a proposition on the table for the Limerick to Waterford route, Limerick to Cahir in the first aspect of it, which would bypass Pallasgreen.

There was a compulsory purchase order, CPO, made on the Pallasgreen to Cahir route, and a design was drawn up. We would also have a bypass of the chronic situation in Tipperary town. One cannot walk the streets. The streets cannot be repaired; nothing can be done with them. We need that bypass. The town is stifled and it is being stagnated further by this severe rejection of the proposals to bring the road from Limerick to Cahir. I have nothing against the Limerick to Cork motorway but Limerick to Cahir was €380 million cheaper. It adds 18 to 20 minutes to the journey, but we wanted an M8 junction in Cahir, which is the crossroads of Munster. The motorway to Dublin and the M8 motorway to Cork are totally underutlised. The proposal made perfect sense, but politically it was not okay for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, and other people from Cork. They are now insisting that there is no money, even for preliminary investigations or studies to be carried out.

Limerick to Cork sounded good and it looked good. It was announced in Cork first and then the Ministers went to Sligo to announce this one. They went to Sligo just to give the impression that it was not a Dublin-centric plan. It is Dublin-centric. Everything goes to Dublin. I contend - my colleague made the same point last night - that there are too many public service vehicles in Dublin. There is no room for any more. New Luas units are being built and more have been ordered but they cannot cross O'Connell Bridge. They do not fit, and they block the buses and the bicycles and everything else. There are too many buses already. More momentum should be put into green energy and into electric. There are taxis, many of which are private, and I salute them for the efforts they are trying to make. There are Luas, DART and rail services. I am not begrudging one thing Dublin has but it is oversupplied and different transport modes are in one another's way because of bad planning.

There have been enormous efforts to starve the rest of the country and give everything to the capital. Successive reports from the OECD and many other sources have stated that 53% or 54% of our national economic activity is inside the Pale. That is about 20% higher than any other European capital. There is bedlam in Dublin. One cannot get a bed or get office space - although I know more office space is being built - but above all people cannot get houses. We also do not have a functioning transport system. It takes me three hours to get out of here of an evening, if I leave after 3 p.m., to get down below Naas. Everything is happening here. There is a sense of madness. The cranes are up again. When we walk out of Leinster House tonight and look up it is nice to see them. They are not building houses. We saw what the last boom brought us. It brought us bedlam and a total crash and bang. It was boasted that there were more cranes in Dublin than in London. Where did it get us? A heap of brus on the floor like a heap of kippins that would not even burn in the fire.It has caused tragedy and devastation in people's lives.

The results are now clear. The Government will not face the vulture funds and take them on. It will not stand with the people who want to house themselves, people who did nothing wrong to anyone. People wanted to get planning permission, to save their wages and get loans so that they could build houses for themselves. We have now been told that Tipperary will have a cap of 480 new houses. To hell with the people. I said earlier that former Ministers Kelly and Hogan did more damage to rural Ireland than Cromwell did. To hell or to Connacht, it was said. We cannot even go to Connacht any more because there is no train route to it.

I am disappointed that no senior Minister is in the House tonight to listen to this. I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy McEntee. The Ministers do not want to listen to it. I am disappointed that they cannot face the people. There was no meaningful debate. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, had a presentation in the audiovisual room in 2016 where he committed to coming in to the House to have a full debate on the issue and said that it would have to be passed by the Oireachtas. He is flouting his responsibilities to the people. The people gave the Government a severe wallop, as iar-Taoiseach Kenny called it, the last time. Why would they not? The Government thought the people were irrelevant and thought it could manage without them. They were fed on a diet of liberal legislation for five years - the Labour Party included. I warned Labour about what would happen to it. I said that it would come back in a car and it came back in a seven-seater. Deputy Kelly then sought the leadership and he could not get anyone to second him. That is the sort of confidence people have in him and he expects the people of Tipperary to have it in him now, despite the ruin he brought on rural Ireland with all the different legislation he brought in concerning the tyres on cars etc. I believe there were funny stories behind that. He announced houses all over the county. I am like a bad record, but he would not build a hen house in Kinvara or a dog-shed in Carrick-on-Suir. He would only talk about it. Eleven houses were built in Tipperary by the council in the years 2011 to 2016. That is one and a half houses per year, after all his talk. He is now going around the country holding meetings with other Deputies, trying to reincarnate himself and act as the saviour of rural Ireland. However, the people of rural Ireland are educated and they are smart and intelligent. All they want to do is to live and be let live and not to be banished from the roads by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, and his regressive legislation.

I wondered what kind of water the Cabinet was drinking the other day when it came out and said that any person who lets a learner driver drive unaccompanied would be penalised. I have children myself, as do many Deputies here. All have full licences except for one, who is not on the road yet. Perhaps people cannot afford two cars or perhaps one partner cannot drive. People will have to leave work to come home to drive to college with their sons or daughters. The Government wants us all to be at home, dossing and mooching around. The former Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, said that they all had big screens and mobile phones. She got her answer for that. The Government will get its answer too. The people are waiting for it. They are not putting up with all of this regressive legislation, none of which is rural-proofed.

The Government announced this grandiose plan in a spin of glory in an attempt to win more popularity for the Taoiseach. I met the head of the IDA last year in Washington, who told me that he cannot get a company to invest anywhere outside of Dublin now. That is an issue the Government should be dealing with. He told that to the Taoiseach as well; he met him an hour before I met him. In Washington in 2004 I was told the same thing. Companies will not locate in rural Ireland because everything has been invested in Dublin. The people of rural Ireland do not want anything from the Government only to be let live. They want to be the job creators and to be allowed to provide for their families and build houses for them. However, these people cannot get planning. I have met dozens of couples who have sites and the wherewithal to build a house but who cannot get planning. There is every reason in the world to give these people planning. I have heard former Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, talking about urban sprawl. That is not the panacea. Our clubs, schools, churches and people need to exist in rural Ireland. People were hunted out of it and starved out of it during the Famine, and this something similar. People are being driven out of rural Ireland now and are being persecuted for living there.

Repairs to the roads in Tipperary will cost an estimated €200 million. We cannot get this money. We cannot get money for rural social schemes or the new community or local involvement schemes which were announced last November. The Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Ring, was a great man then. What has he been doing? We cannot get money from the Leader programme. We had the best Leader programme in Europe, which was held up all over the world as a model. Big Phil the destroyer, the former Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, destroyed it because, he said, he wanted to give power to the Fine Gael councils. I heard him saying it at different times. This approach was supported by Deputy Kelly. It ruined Leader. The Government has been trying to restart the programme for the past three years and barely a penny has been given out so far, perhaps €30 million from a €400 million programme. That €400 million itself represents a drop from well over €1.4 billion in the last Leader programme. The money was given out to local improvement schemes. I have no problem with a portion of it being given out to that end, but that money was supposed to support community projects and private entrepreneurs who wanted to develop rural Ireland. Instead, that money was raided. The same Minister, was also tasked with looking after the post offices. I made the point in here - it was around Holy Thursday - that it was like Pontius Pilate, the way he washed his hands of the post offices and handed them over to Deputy Naughten. He did not want the poisoned chalice of the post offices. He was not interested in supporting the post offices.

We have presented projects in here and demonstrated different models, such as the German model and the New Zealand model as seen with Kiwibank, among others, which showed that banking could be handled by post offices. This is being resisted because the Government is in bed with the banks. The Government refuses to pass legislation to deal with the vulture funds. The banks now want to offload their dirty work onto vulture funds. The Government is saying that it is not happening. However, I have had people ringing me - and I am sure the Minister of State has had people ringing her too - who are with Permanent TSB and who have made settlements, but part of the money is parked and they are paying away as best they can. These people are now terrified. They are sick and worried about the vulture funds. These vulture funds are nameless and shameless. They will not come before the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, to account for themselves. This book of 20,000 loans represents families. The Government thinks we are talking about a commodity, like cattle at a mart. We are talking about human lives. How many suicides have we had? How many families and marriages have been devastated by this? It has caused pressure and sickness. People feel they are unable to look after their families because of the pressure from the banks. Marauding thugs - I call them the third force - are going out and beating up fathers and sons on the side of the road and seizing machinery and everything else. I have brought this issue up on the floor of this Chamber. This is happening; I am not living in dreamland. The banks can do what they like. The cabals organised a couple of court cases and had people in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions shredding some files and burning others. It would not happen in the Congo. What is going on here would not happen in a Third World country. It is going on here with impunity under the Government's watch. All it can come up with is this 140-page, raggle-taggle plan.

Some 170 projects have been announced already, a number of them two and three times over, and more of them have been cobbled together. If we are paying the spin doctors and senior civil servants to cobble all of this together at the behest of their masters, it is a sad reflection on what our country has come to in 2018, two years after celebrating the centenary of the 1916 martyrs and the people who gave us our freedom.

In the same way, I keep asking the Minister, Deputy Naughten, about the post offices. We meet him every two weeks. We lost 33 postmen in Tipperary. I believe 180 had to be let go across the country, and there are 1,000 people working in the GPO. I presume some of them are working hard but there is dead weight there also, and the unions have to answer for keeping them in there. Each time there is a cut, it is the ordinary bean an phoist and fear an phoist in the oifig an phoist who are amach ar an mbóthar. They are the ordinary people who are penalised and cut all the time. The Government view is that we must trim all of them but not touch the dead weight inside the centre of the department in the GPO. There are more people working in the GPO now than when Padraig Pearse was there, but what the hell are they doing? They should get out and do meaningful work and allow the ordinary post offices have a banking service. Give them the motor taxation service. The Minister, Deputy Ross, has moved to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. I asked the Minister, Deputy Ross, months ago to allow the post offices offer a motor taxation service. He thought I was pulling a fast one or that something shady was going on, but he should allow the post offices to do motor taxation as they are ready, willing and able to do it.

We should allow the county housing officials to do the work they want to do on housing. They are crying out for staff. They should move over to there. I have nothing against council officials good, bad or indifferent. I have worked in a motor tax office and every place else. All I am asking of the Minister of State is to be real with the people. Stand up and face them and say, "Look, we are in this together". Ní neart go cur le chéile. Bring back the meitheal philosophy. We do not want spin and jocose announcements of projects we know we will never see, projects that have been announced several times previously. People are too smart for that.

I ask the media to drill down on this and expose it for what it is, namely, a fraud and a misplaced plan being perpetrated on the people of Ireland. However, the people are a smart and educated electorate, and they will be waiting on the Government again. I told the Government they were waiting in the long grass the previous time. They were, and they will wait again. They will come out and go into the ballot box with the peann luaidhe, the little pencil, and there will be no spin machine for the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar. Nothing will penetrate the ballot box and they will put uimhir a haon, uimhir a naoi or maybe uimhir a deich on the ballot paper and he will get his answer.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this proposed plan, and I hope it is only a proposed plan. First, anything I say to the Minister of State is not personal; it is purely based on the plan and its architects. We were told that the purpose of this plan was to take people out of Dublin and build up the rural part of the country. We were told also that it would benefit cities such as Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway but, as I see it, this is another Dublin plan. There is very little in it for any other part of the country. I will read it again, but I did not see Kerry mentioned in the plan once. That is what we have to put up with. The people of Kerry and the people of rural Ireland are entitled to live the best way they can and where they want to live. No one can make them live anywhere else against their will.

It is hard to highlight everything in the plan but there are different proposals and strategies in it. Page 92 refers to the location of homes. It states that future homes are required to be located where people have the best opportunities to access a high standard quality of life. It further states that they are to be located in places that can support sustainable development. Where are those places? It further states that places which support growth, innovation and the efficient provision of infrastructure and are accessible to a range of local services can encourage the use of public transport, walking, cycling and help tackle climate change.

The plan also refers to requirements to live in our cities and larger towns. We have to be very careful when we see this because planners will be told how to interpret it. It refers to areas where large-scale housing demand exists and where homes and appropriate supporting services can be delivered more efficiently and effectively at less cost to the State in the long run and still be located in our smaller towns, villages and rural areas including the countryside, but at an appropriate scale, that does not detract from the capacity of our larger towns and cities to deliver homes more sustainably. We are keeping our ear to the ground and we have been told that the new plan will direct local authorities to suggest that one-off houses cannot be built in rural areas other than when and where towns and villages are sufficiently built up. When will that happen? That is the trouble.

John Moran had a role in the Central Bank. It is no wonder the country went the way it did. When a fellow with a mind like his was involved, it is no wonder the thing went wallop. He says that-----

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy is here long enough to know he should not mention the names of people outside the House.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am sorry, but this man is a public figure and he has come out with a story that rural Ireland is a burden on the State.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Healy-Rae, those outside the House have a right to defend themselves. It does not matter what they-----

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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They make public pronouncements.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Hold on. The Deputy is here a long time. He must comply with what has been the practice over the years. He can make references, but must desist from mentioning names. That is all I am saying.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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These people have an idea that rural Ireland is a burden on the State. They complained about 500,000 one-off houses being built around the country. I want to say to those people that all those houses had to go through the rigorous planning process before planning permission was granted. They had to comply with site assessment and septic tank requirements. They could not be obtrusive in terms of the countryside, they had to have the required sight distance going out on roads, and, by and large, they had to be connected to the area in which they wanted to build. Those people did nothing wrong when they put a roof over their own heads. If the Government is proposing to stop people doing that, there will be crowds outside the gate of these Houses. They have been there in the past but there will be a bigger crowd outside the gate if it tries to do something like that to people who are not doing any harm.

There is a lot of talk here about the need for local authorities to build houses for homeless people. That has to be done in certain cases, but where people can and want to build a house in which to bring up their families the way they want to and not have to experience the social problems they may experience if they were in more built-up areas, I cannot see anything wrong with that. These people are saying there will have to be a financial need for them to be allowed build a house in a rural area. That is totally wrong and is the height of blackguarding because most people in rural Ireland are trying to live the best way they can off their bit of land, but they have to travel to work and I do not see anything wrong with that.

They are saying that these people are costing the State in terms of infrastructure. Most of them have their own septic tanks and no one should tell me that the roads have to be maintained for them. Those are the same roads used since the time of the horse and carts in the 1800s. We battled to get them resurfaced, so surely they are entitled to that. What about the urban cost? There is no talk about that. All we hear is the burden rural Ireland is on the State. Dublin has trains, buses, the DART, the Luas, the metro, and another terminal built in Dublin Airport, yet one would get lonely in Shannon Airport now.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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One would.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I was watching on the monitor when another Member said that it was a good thing that people would be told where to build, what to build and how to build it.

I reject that out of hand and stand by the people who have paid a high price to build their own houses in which to raise their families. It is aggravating to say the least.

This Government could not plan for three or four years never mind 22. That this plan will be sacrosanct and statutory and that it may be impossible to add anything or take it away if it is wrong is against my principles. Climate change is going to cost €22 billion or at least €22 billion will be provided for it. Who will provide that? It will, of course, be the people. At that rate of going, it will cost €1 billion a year to comply. We are told we will not be allowed to cut turf by 2030. The words used were to the effect that we cannot burn peat. We were told we would be better off to leave the turf in the bog but a lot of people in Gneevgullia, Kilcummin, Kilgarvan, Caherciveen, Killorglin and all the areas in between would be very cold if they were not allowed go to the bog, cut their turf and bring it home. There will be serious repercussions if the Government tries to implement that.

On the Paris Agreement, every law and rule has to apply to Ireland but there is no talk at all about Japan where they cannot see one another with the smog. They have masks on their faces. It is the same in China. We find that all the grand tractors and lorries we had have all gone now to Third World countries like India where they are working fine. We cannot use them here at all. We must have AdBlue and additional costs and complications. We must have that but the rest of the world can have what was good enough for us ten, 15, 20 or even 30 years ago. In 2006 and 2007, people were told they would have to get diesel cars. In 2012 and 2013, they were told to have AdBlue and comply with climate regulations. My time is running out, but-----

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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It has run out.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I was interrupted a small bit. We are told now that we must go electric. If the Government thinks it is going down the country with electric cars, I note that we are practically swimming in pools of water because no dykes are opened at the sides of the roads. If one splash of water goes into these electric cars-----

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy's time is up.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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There is no place to charge them. I am not happy at all with this plan or at the way in which Kerry has been left behind. I and the other elected representatives will not stand for that.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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We move on to the Social Democrats and the Green Party. I call Deputy Catherine Murphy who, I understand, is sharing time with Deputies Eamon Ryan and Seamus Healy. Is that agreed? Agreed. There are 30 minutes in the slot.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I am very much in favour of strategic planning and believe the capital plan should be integrated into a larger framework. I was very critical when that did not happen with the launch of the national spatial strategy. However, the way this plan has been developed will come back to haunt the Government. Early last year, the process was opened to submissions, but it was a one-way consultation. Until the plan was published, it was not obvious what, if anything, had been taken on board from those submissions. The plan should also have been launched in this Parliament. The Government is, after all, a minority one, but it has decided it has a monopoly on wisdom. That is outrageous.

It is essential that any national development framework is focused, evidence-based and takes account of the current environment, which, in this case, requires a transition between the national spatial strategy and the national development plan. It is not just that on day 1 we finish with the former and move on. The core strategy, we are told, is to develop a counterbalance to Dublin, by which is meant the greater Dublin area including counties Kildare, Meath, Wicklow and even further afield. We are to understand that the city cores of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, together with Athlone are to be the counterbalance to Dublin. In ten years' time will the number of locations chosen be a matter of regret given the risk that funds are being spread too thinly? What evidence was used to determine the number of priority locations?

The national planning framework will replace the national spatial strategy, which has informed development over the last 20 years. It is still informing development with sizable amounts of land being rezoned as we speak. Last May, I was told in a reply from the Minister of State, Deputy English, that the national planning framework would be the top level plan informing in turn the new regional and economic strategies. The regional strategies will replace the current regional planning guidelines. If those strategies are being developed, it would have been useful to have them included in a plan rather than to dictate from the top down. After all, if people are committed to something or an area is committed to something, there is a better chance of driving it. Responsibility needs to be taken in those particular areas. I was told in January 2017 in a reply from the then-Minister, Deputy Coveney, that his Department received a report in 2011 from the regional authorities which showed that prior to the introduction of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010, there were 41,788 ha of land in total zoned for housing sufficient for the provision of 1.1 million new homes or an additional population of 2.64 million. Some of that land was inappropriate locations and poorly serviced. The instruction was to scale back the amount of zoned land to 11,000 ha or land sufficient to provide 300,000 new dwellings. That would equate to approximately 12 years' supply. The same reply stated in respect of major metropolitan areas where housing demand is most acute that the existing round of regional planning guidelines continued to provide a reasonable basis for planning growth and housing provision.

I note my own experience in Kildare where the county development plan was adopted in 2017 to run to 2023. The plan provides for an increase of 33,500 new housing units by 2022. If one assumes 2.5 persons per household, it is a population increase of over 80,000. The same type of development will be focused on Meath, Wicklow, Fingal and south Dublin. It is all greenfield development. If the local authorities refuse to comply with the regional planning guidelines as they are in place at the moment, it is open to the Minister to issue directions. Indeed, that is happening. We have a scenario, therefore, in which the Minister is publishing a national planning framework while ignoring the fact that huge tracts of land are currently zoned for housing under the national spatial strategy, which has a different core strategy. There is no transitional arrangement to tie the two together or to provide a capital plan to meet the needs of the currently zoned lands. This is not going to work. We need to know how much land remains zoned and whether it is to be carried over to the national planning framework. We need to know where that land is located. I would have expected to see that detail in any national planning framework. Last Friday, 16 February, the day the national planning framework was launched, did not represent a great new dawn on which the planning ship sailed off in a completely new direction. The plan is sailing off in half a dozen different directions. This is a big cargo ship, if Deputies can imagine that, and it will take time to turn it. If one is dragging behind a legacy of commitments to zoned land which have not been calculated for and which are based on a different strategy, I do not see how that can work.

It is worth looking at what happened in what is termed the "greater Dublin area" between 1996 and 2016. That is a 20-year horizon like the one we are looking at now. I use those years as those were the years on which there was a census of population. The centre core of Dublin city grew by 13% while Dun Laoghaire grew by 13%. Fingal grew by 43% and has doubled its population, not that one would notice it from the infrastructure and facilities in place there. South Dublin grew by 22%, Kildare grew by 39%, Meath by 44% and Wicklow by 28%. Most of what has happened has happened on the arc outside the M50.

The laughable thing is that people say nothing happens outside the M50. I can tell them that a lot of houses were developed outside the M50. What is going to occur is that these areas will continue to grow at least at the same rate for the next decade, so announcing a shiny new plan will change nothing on its own. The absence of key public transport initiatives will make the congestion we see in Dublin city centre today look tame. The key priority in regard to tying in what has happened already to the development of the city centre should have been DART underground, which should have been the number one public transport initiative. We need this 7.6 km tunnel to pull together the rail network but, of course, that is postponed.

The profile of development of other cities, such as Cork, Limerick and Waterford, has followed the same pattern of development in the past 20 years, with the real development in the suburbs rather than the core. Galway has bucked that trend but transport infrastructure has not kept pace and congestion is a real issue that needs to be addressed if that city is to achieve the kind of sustainable living that it requires, and which would make it a really attractive location. Better regional balance will only be achieved by initially focusing on a small number of areas as the primary drivers of such a strategy. If limited resources are stretched too thin, then what will occur is a delay in providing a counter-balance, possibly by decades. I am in favour of better regional balance, which I think its good on a number of fronts, for example, in regard to congestion, housing and increased job prospects due to having a significant population base.

Within the plan we saw a long list of projects and some general aspirations. There are many diagrams that appear to connect things up but when we try to drill down, it gives a very different picture. A lot of decoding of language is needed. For example, we are told social housing will be provided for 112,000 families in the next decade in a bid to address the housing crisis. That sounds great but when one starts to drill down into those numbers in the context of the €6 billion for social housing, which is very welcome, we would have to build those 112,000 homes for €100,000 each. The language used is to "provide" 112,000 homes but it does not mean to build them. Decoding is needed.

With regard to the Cork-Limerick motorway, the key ingredient for a PPP is that it has to stack up financially. Typically, if it is a road, there has to be sufficient traffic to collect significant tolls. Indeed, toll roads have been developed that did not reach the threshold and the contract meant the Exchequer had to pay compensation to the operator. The Cork-Limerick motorway is likely to be a case in point. Its specification is to motorway standard but this is because there will be less access on and off, so there is the possibility of tolling it. It is very easy to predict that is what will happen.

We were told by the chairperson-designate at Transport Infrastructure Ireland this morning that he understood the 2011 census was used to inform this plan, not the 2016 census. Given I had a different response on that in reply to a parliamentary question I asked last year, the Minister should clarify which census was used.

The new €3 billion urban regeneration fund is heavily dependent on the private sector, with 100% matching funding required, which is likely to benefit stronger areas as opposed to weaker areas. We see that all new State agencies must be located outside of Dublin. This reminds me of Charlie McCreevy's decentralisation programme. Real decentralisation would mean decentralisation of decision making, not this kind of sop to give the impression that something is happening. If we are to have regional economic and spatial plans, there has to be the means for local decision making rather than having that determined for particular regions.

The big bash in Sligo to announce this plan was a real slap in the face for democracy. The Government does not have a majority mandate; it is quite a small Government of 58 Deputies out of 158. While submissions were sought for this plan and were published, it is not obvious they were taken on board. We should have had a mature engagement in regard to spending money wisely - an honest engagement on how money is collected and where it is spent - because a lot of nonsense is talked and I heard some of it talked here today. For someone who is passionate about strategic planning to the point that I was talking to myself for years on this, I feel this plan really lets down the term "strategic planning". It is a big disappointment from the point of view of how it was progressed; it is a real missed opportunity.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I was very hopeful and supportive of the process in terms of the national planning framework and aligning that with the national capital plan. I would have gone further and put our national climate mitigation plan together with those because I think all three should be connected. However, I have been very disheartened in the last five or six months. I was very disappointed with the draft plan when it was published before Christmas and I am even more disappointed now.

The plan started with the right key aspirations. First, all the documents and all the talk were exactly right in that the key mission was to try to switch away from the sprawling development seen across our State towards more compact settlements where people live close to their work and schools, and there is a real reduction in the cost of providing public services and quality of life for people. Second, this would be part of the transition to a low-carbon society which we know we have to make but at which we are failing terribly. This plan would give us a real opportunity, if we were to only grasp it instead of shying away from it, as we are at present. Third, it would provide a chance to have proper balanced regional development, not the madcap decentralisation approach that Charlie McCreevy took in the early parts of the last decade, but a real way of bringing life back into the centres of Limerick, Cork, Galway and Waterford as a way of counterbalancing the continued growth of Dublin. Last but not least, there would be the development of greater engagement by local authorities and regional authorities in this process in terms of how we prioritise projects, how we spend money and so on.

It is such an extensive document it would take more than the 12 minutes I have to address it properly but I want to set out some examples of where I think we have got it wrong in the final six months and, in particular, in the final document. I want to cite a couple of commentators who have spoken about this because I happen to agree with their analyses. I will start with John Moran, the former Secretary General of the Department of Finance. While I am not quoting him directly, I think he got it absolutely right in an article in last Sunday's newspapers that this was a compromised document. He said it was just protecting the status quoand that those behind it were not willing to be brave or to really think radically in terms of where we need to go from here.

Second, I want to quote Edgar Morgenroth of Dublin City University, who I believe was involved in the early stages of this plan. He makes the very valid case that by the continued overspending on new roads development and inter-urban motorways, we are not actually going to deliver the stated objective of building up urban cores. It simply does not work. What it does is to continue the doughnut tendency which we have seen in all of those graphic maps from ten or 20 years ago that show the number of people who are commuting long distances - the 250,000 people the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, referred to in his speech in the House, who are spending more than two hours a day on their commute and travelling 30 to 60 miles to our cities. That has to stop but it is not stopping. It is going to continue because we have compromised it by just investing in roads and by again, at the last minute, saying people can keep going with one-off housing, live in a house 30 or 40 miles out in the country and commute into the city every day. That is still where we are going. The figures are stark. Some 60% of the 500,000 houses we are expecting to build are to be outside the existing centres, either in greenfield, edge of town or edge of city sites, or further afield. However, they are expensive to develop and they are not achieving the key objective, which is to bring urban life back to the core.

When it comes to urban cores, the metro is welcome, although it is very late.

7 o’clock

It should have been commissioned in 2011 when it had planning permission and European Investment Bank funding and would have been the perfect counter-cyclical project. I am glad that it is being varied to include the connection to the south side, as was always the intention. However it is ten years late and it is not enough on its own. Dublin is in a transport crisis and it will only get worse as traffic continues to grow by 5% annually. The failure to advance the DART interconnector with any urgency, detailed planning or financial backing is a historic blunder. That project connects all the old railway lines. We have been looking for it since 1972 and recognised it was critical for an integrated public transport system. This Government has blown that opportunity. It is a terrible historic failing.Similarly, today, as Deputy Catherine Murphy noted, Transport Infrastructure Ireland was before the committee on transport. TII told us it had loads of road projects which were ready to go to tender. It is raring to go with all sorts of public private partnership roads. Members of IBEC are licking their lips for the public private partnership benefits that will go to them. This is a model we know well where certain road construction companies will do really well from this plan. Is there a single public transport rail project ready to go to tender? Not on your nelly, there is not. Nor is there any sign of any of the projects such as bus rapid transit or other bus connect projects, not only in Dublin but also in Cork, Galway, Limerick or Waterford. There is nothing. We seem to have an impassable inability to deliver public transport projects when we need them most. This plan does not favour those plans in the way it should if it wished to achieve the objectives that it set out at the beginning.

There was a Minister parading around talking about spending €58 million on greenways. That will probably get us the Dublin to Galway greenway if only we could get over the objections. The critical cycling infrastructure needed in Dublin today, the Sutton to Sandycove cycle route, or Bray to Balbriggan which is what we ought to be thinking of, the Liffey cycle route, the Dodder greenway, the Royal and Grand Canals, the Santry greenway are all projects that would achieve the objectives of creating really good compact living spaces. There is no impetus behind it. There is no support or priority given to it.

When it comes to the car-based system there is a need to think radically about where the trends are in cities that work. They are not going towards car ownership, but car sharing and innovative technological solutions that will bring us away from this car-based system. Fine Gael is just going with the status quo. It is the old thing where people have a three-bed semi and a car and have to drive for three or four hours each day, stuck in traffic in and out, because there is no way it will work. The Government could widen the N7 between Naas and Dublin to a 20-lane highway and it would still hit a standstill at the Red Cow. It will still jam as it is jamming today.

The Government is not developing compact cities and is not prioritising compact development. Nor is it sufficiently ambitious on low-carbon development. Paul Kenny from the Tipperary Energy Agency made a simple point to a committee here recently. He said that 60% of houses being built today are being built with fossil fuel heating systems. It is crazy. In 10 or 20 years' time they will have to be retrofitted at real cost. We have the alternative technologies in heat pumps which would help balance our renewable energy supply. We should move to that at a switch because that is where the world is going. The balancing capability with electric vehicles, heat pumps, and renewable power provides us with competitive play. We could already be doing it if we just said that we would stop burning fossil fuels.

The Taoiseach is out in Strasbourg acting as though he has nothing to do with how we are a terrible climate laggard. We are but if the Taoiseach meant to change it, the Government could make an immediate change to the big regulations to prohibit fossil fuels. If the Government was serious about climate change it would not countenance more fossil fuel power stations. We need to shut down Moneypoint and the peat-fired power stations. We cannot replace them with gas or fossil fuels and certainly not biomass, which is the least sustainable option of all. We have the potential. It sounds great to say that we have 3.5 GW of additional renewable power but we should do that in the Irish Sea alone. We should do an additional 2 GW of solar power and we should look to use Moneypoint as the connection point for offshore wind in the Atlantic which is now technologically and economically feasible. That is what is happening in other countries now, that is what they are investing in but we are not. We do not have the low-carbon ambition that we need to get us out of the laggard category and into the leadership one.

The thing which disappoints me most, and I think I have said it at every point of consultation or other process, is that this plan should have been a land-use plan to go with the national planning framework. We should look at 20,000 ha of forestry each year, not just the Sitka spruce monoculture clear-felling system. We should go towards a system using alder, rowan, ash and other indigenous forestry which we pay farmers for. It will help with climate, through the carbon store, and the money could go to the county where the tree is grown, but also protect biodiversity and creating a really wild Atlantic Way, which will cause floods of tourists to come here because it will be an attractive environment to visit. There is none of that ambition. The land-use plan is needed to go from the mountains to the sea so that we would manage our flooding system, our carbon storage and stop digging up peat which is the most valuable of carbon storage that we have, but there is none of that. How can we have a planning framework that does not plan our land? It is a terrible failing and a gap in this report.

On regional development, it is true that we need to develop Cork, Galway, Waterford, Limerick and Sligo and Letterkenny but we need to develop them in conjunction with Derry and think on an all-island basis. Similarly, we need to consider the corridor through Louth in terms of a Dublin-Belfast corridor. That level of strategic thinking is not evident here to compete against the northern corridor which the British Government is developing in the north of England. This plan fails where at the last minute, it says that the €1 billion regional fund can go to a whole range of projects. It should say that it is specific and has to go towards putting life back into high streets in every 19th century town in Ireland. They are dying. As John Moran has said, €1 billion is not enough. That should be exclusively what it is for and the towns and counties that would come up with the best solutions could be replicated elsewhere. Make them meet that challenge of restoring the 19th century towns. It brings life back into the towns rather than letting them die and it benefits the whole country. There is none of that.

On enhancing local powers, it is abundantly clear that we need a directly elected mayor of Dublin. Today at the transport committee we saw the usual thing where there are 40 agencies responsible for transport in Dublin, every one blaming the other. The buck needs to stop somewhere. It needs a mayor to manage this city and each of the other cities. I would like to have seen real powers being given and the allocation of money for those towns and for regeneration.

Finally, we need a cost rental housing model as the cities develop in order to get to a more unitary housing system, about which we will speak more in the coming weeks.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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County Tipperary has been snubbed in this national development plan. It is a county with a population of approximately 160,000 and is the sixth largest county by area in the country and the second largest in the southern region. In its submission and contribution to the plan, Tipperary County Council sought to ensure that the county plays an important and central part in the future of Ireland and its southern region and believes that the county is well positioned to play that role. It went on to state that Tipperary county, its council, community, citizens, businesses, voluntary organisations have a vision capacity, track record and drive to contribute positively to achieving the goals and ambition of the plan. It recommended that the plan should recognise the importance of Clonmel to the successful development of south Tipperary, the south-east region and, indeed, the southern region. Furthermore it said that the plan should recognise the importance of Nenagh for the development of north Tipperary, the mid-west region and the southern region generally. Instead, what we got was the plan announced on Friday, which excludes all Tipperary towns from being growth centres and priority for development.

The Taoiseach's spin machine, the strategic communications unit funded by taxpayers, choreographed the launch of the national planning framework or Project Ireland 2040 on Friday. A more realistic title would be the "National Planning Framework: Pie in the Sky 2040".

Despite the hype and the fanfare, the Fine Gael plan has almost entirely snubbed County Tipperary. Like Fianna Fáil's national spatial strategy, announced by former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in 2002, before it, no Tipperary town is earmarked as a growth centre or prioritised for investment or job creation. Every Tipperary town was excluded from the then Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton's regional jobs plan in 2014 as well. Ten other towns were earmarked for advance factories and advance offices, but not a single Tipperary town. Instead, there is a concentration of growth and investment and priority for jobs for Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Sligo, Athlone, Letterkenny, Drogheda and Dundalk. These are the urban areas favoured for future growth. This means that those towns and cities will have key strategic and economic advantages over all towns in County Tipperary. Put more starkly, Tipperary towns will be systematically discriminated against in the area of growth, job creation and investment. In effect, Limerick, Cork and Waterford, in particular, because they are adjacent to Tipperary, will suck the lifeblood, investment, growth and jobs from the county and this simply has to be changed. Tipperary must get its fair share. It must have at least two towns recognised and prioritised as growth centres.

The motorway status for the N24 roadway has also been ignored in this plan for the umpteenth time. The N24 is a key economic and social driver for the south of the county but it is also substandard and dangerous in many stretches. The county council put forward a realistic plan for the connection of Limerick to Cork, through the N24 to Cahir, on to the M8 and on to Cork giving a saving of €380 million. It was also ignored. Our rail lines are under threat. The Ballybrophy line and the Limerick-Waterford line are under threat on a daily basis. Tipperary town, because of the lack of development of the motorway N24 and bypass, will continue to be choked by thousands of vehicles, including heavy goods vehicles, driving through its main street. There will be no bypass either for Carrick-on-Suir in this plan.

The Fine Gael-lndependent Alliance Government, supported, unfortunately, and propped up by Fianna Fáil, has made a deliberate political choice to discriminate against Tipperary. The plan in reality refers to 179 projects and €40 billion of expenditure already announced, with the rest of it fuzzy, uncosted and with little or no timelines. The expenditure figure of €116 billion is used to give the impression of a significant increase in spending but when population growth and use of gross national income instead of gross domestic product are taken into account, the investment proposed in this plan is at best modest, rising from 2.9% in 2018 to 4.1% in 2027, which is still below the European average.

The much-hyped climate and energy section of the plan will, by the Taoiseach's own admission, miss the EU climate and energy agreed targets by a whopping 60%. The Taoiseach also raised the prospect of new taxes in this area.

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Deputy to conclude.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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I will wind up now.

This plan must be revisited and it must be reversed. Tipperary must get its fair share of investment and it must have towns prioritised for economic growth and investment. This is, effectively, an election manifesto produced and hyped with taxpayers' money and without any legal foundation.

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Minister to start, although I will probably ask him to adjourn the debate shortly.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I listened to the three previous speakers and although I am a long time in this House, I have never heard such negative, old-style politics in my life. There is a complete refusal to recognise what is being done here.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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Where is the N24?

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister without interruption.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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This is a plan that is not developer-led. This is a plan that is not about vanity projects. This is a plan that is not about one for everyone in the audience.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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The N24 is not a vanity project.

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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Can we have the Minister without interruption?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Seamus Healy can shout me down all he likes. He had his opportunity to speak and it was not any sort of coherent analysis of the plan that was set out.

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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Minister, one moment.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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On a point of order-----

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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I will not take a point of order. Deputy Seamus Healy was not interrupted and should let the Minister continue, and I ask the Minister to address the Chair.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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Is the Minister stating that the N24 motorway is a vanity project?

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy should resume his seat. I am ruling-----

Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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Is the Minister stating that every Tipperary town should be excluded from this plan?

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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-----it is not a point of order. The Deputy should resume his seat. The Minister without interruption.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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In this House we have to be able to debate maturely.

I believe that this is a fundamental shift. We are moving away from the developer-led policies that have afflicted our city. I agree with Deputy Catherine Murphy that this is the first time a Government has sought to put €116 billion of Exchequer and public funds behind the spatial plan. It is the first time we have ever tried to build compact cities with balanced regional development, spreading the development, containing the growth of Dublin to only a 25% increase, seeing our new cities grow by double that and seeing our town centres revived. Equally, and contrary to what-----

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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I must ask the Minister to move the adjournment.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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That was a very short allocation of time.

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister should stay there. He might be back shortly.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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They will be back anyhow to listen to me in due course. I move the adjournment.

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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It is all that is moving in this city at present.