Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I agree that this whole debate is about infrastructure, which is being provided. Some €1,400 million has today been allocated for national roads, together with non-national roads. The figures being invested are enormous and many Members living in the country will see the results. I see them on my occasional visits around the country. Infrastructure is being provided and some great jobs have been done. Perhaps they took too long in some cases, perhaps they did not. However, the work is being done and the investment is being made.

The national spatial strategy never envisaged that the Dublin area must be forgotten. Rather, it is concerned with providing alternatives and developing other parts of the country to enable them to compete with Dublin. It was never intended to run down Dublin. The target is that growth and development in other regions will outstrip Dublin in the future but we are not going to move everybody out of Dublin. It is important that services are provided for people who live in Dublin and want to stay there and have a good quality of life. However, it is hoped that in the future other regions, gateways and hubs will develop at a faster pace than Dublin.

The national spatial strategy also strongly supports rural development and in this regard the Western Development Commission has launched its Look West initiative aimed at people living in the greater Dublin area who may consider moving to the west for quality of life reasons. My Department's guidelines on sustainable rural housing for planning authorities, published in draft form last year, seek to ensure that people in the rural community are facilitated in obtaining planning permission for their housing proposals. In the interests of sustaining population levels in the future, planning authorities are required to ensure any demand for housing in rural areas suffering from population decline is subject to good planning practice and accommodated.