Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senators for their contributions thus far to this debate on the national development plan. I am sorry if Senator Quinn believes this was simply a connection exercise of spending programmes to be put together willy-nilly. In fact, a long consultation process has been ongoing for the past 12 months, not only with the social partners but with the regional authorities, local authority members and many business groups in the context of the Estimates process and the social partnership programme. Many representations, ideas and priorities were put forward by various interest groups which the Government had to pull together.

People talk about the size of the plan at €184 billion but it is a much broader and comprehensive plan in terms of setting out social inclusion objectives as well as simply economic or capital investment programmes. It is right that we should do so since the vision the Senator talked about that we are trying to bring about is set out in the Towards 2016 document, with all the resonance that provides. It is an opportunity, over the next ten years, for us to make good some of the historic infrastructural deficits that are with us because we did not have the resources in the past to make those sort of investments. We can build on the future and on many of the important improvements we now see in the implementing agencies, whether it is the National Roads Authority, the Railway Procurement Agency or the proposed Dublin Transport Authority.

The Senator talked about a vision but there is a quadrupling of investment in public transport. When this Government came into office it took over from an Administration whose political colour was such that one would expect some commitment to public transport but the investment in the previous year was nil. We are now quadrupling the level of investment in this plan compared to the 2000 to 2006 plan. That vision will provide a modern transport infrastructure not only for this city but throughout the country.

Transport 21 has been assessed through the DTO. The CIE strategic rail network was independently assessed. The idea put forward by some opinion formers in the private sector that there has been no analysis or appraisal or assessment of Transport 21 is nonsense. Under the capital appraisal guidelines, any projects over €30 million require cost benefit analysis and they will be dealt with in that way. Individual projects over a certain figure must get individual Cabinet approval but when a ten year investment programme is set out, a cost benefit analysis is not done on each individual project. That is done according as the programme is rolled out but it is an integrated one. It is a transport plan that stands the test of scrutiny. For example, we are rolling out a national road network which will be achieved by 2010. There are 22 major projects under contract currently which are coming in on time and on budget and which are withstanding all the tests and appraisals people want.

The Senator said this plan has no vision. This plan is about five basic points. It is about the fact that we must invest in human capital through a strategy for technology, innovation and science that we have put in place and that has been agreed at Cabinet level and between myself and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and approved by Cabinet. It is an unprecedented investment in third and fourth level education. It has the backing of the science community. It refers to doubling PhDs and making sure we have the knowledge based industry that will be required for us to compete in an increasingly difficult and competitive international environment for jobs and investment in the future.

We need to build an economic infrastructure. We need a transport system. We also need to proceed with the ambitious targets in the NESC report on housing, which we are putting forward. In the last plan we had €9 billion for housing. Over €22 billion will go into housing, not because I want to spend money but because we need the houses. We must build 60,000 affordable houses and 40,000 social houses. That is what NESC said we have to do based on the demographics as it saw them. Given the successful policies we are implementing, the success of which appear to be taken for granted, and the resources that are now available to Government, we can proceed with that ambitious housing programme in full, quite apart from the expanded capacity of the construction industry, which is now providing 80,000 housing units per year. Ten years ago it could only provide 35,000.

I hear many people on the other side of the House talking about the problems with housing. If some of their local authority members got their act together at local authority level——