John Ellis (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity of saying a few words on the national spatial strategy which has been in place for a number of years. The National Development Plan 2007 to 2013 proposed a number of major developments around the country. Many of these developments have been put on hold due to financial or other reasons. People often forget the changes that have taken place in Ireland in the past three or four years. Senator Donohoe mentioned ghost estates, but these ghost estates were created because people were supplying houses to meet the demand at the time.

Owing to the economic downturn, people were no longer in a position to buy these houses and many people had joined a social welfare queue, which is part of our problem. We have to look at the consequences of this for the national spatial strategy. People who are dependent on social welfare will not be in a position to acquire homes. It is not in their interest to acquire them because of the way the social welfare system treats those who are in rented accommodation, or do not own their own homes.

Some parts of the country have been left behind in the spatial strategy. There are regions that do not have broadband and which do not have many of the other services necessary to develop our communities. People will then end up living in areas they did not choose and the result is that communities will suffer and might become unsustainable. That worries us all. We see it happening where communities in parts of rural Ireland are starting to lose post offices, teachers in schools and various other services that have been taken for granted for years. One example of that is the disappearance of rural pubs in the past five or six years. It is another service that is taken out of the community. Rather than having a drink locally, people now have to travel if they want to go to the pub. We often talk about sustainability, but we cannot go to the pub without a taxi to take us home. That has an environmental cost.

While we have a national spatial strategy, it is important to sustain our local communities, especially in rural Ireland. Certain groups are trying to force people to live in urban areas. Many of these urban areas do not have the necessary services available to them. For example, there is a shortage of school places in Dublin city. Some of the hubs and gateways that were originally proposed have not developed to the extent that was proposed. Some designated towns were supposed to double in size between the introduction of the spatial strategy and 2020, yet their populations have decreased. This is having a major effect on the overall strategy.

Many parts of this country have good infrastructure, but they are not developing, mainly because the incentives may not be there for them. We are lucky in my part of the country because we have a very good train service, which was put in place in the past few years and which has resulted in more people using the train on long journeys to Dublin. However, some roads have not been developed fully. The N4 after Mullingar has not been improved to the necessary quality, not just for the people who use it, but for environmental purposes as well because there would be less fuel consumption if the standard of the road was improved. People do not seem to look at these things, but at the end line. There is a need for a total review of the upgrading of our roads and rail services.

Regional airports will become a major bone of contention in the future because funding from the Government or the European Union may not be available. If we are going to ask people to use public transport and get from A to B as quickly as possible, they will want to use these regional airports. I heard comments that the future of Knock Airport was questionable. The numbers of people provided a service by that airport far outweigh anything that people ever dreamed of initially. It now provides a service for people in the west who had to drive to Dublin, Shannon, Cork or Belfast to get to an airport of international standard. This shows that regional development can be of importance.

The strategy also mentions regional planning guidelines. Some of the planning guidelines that have been brought forward in recent years are anti-rural and will affect our smaller communities. We all know of towns and villages that provide good sewerage, water services and transport services. However, in some cases people are forced to move from those towns and villages because they cannot get planning permission. They can be forced to move because they do not come within certain criteria and are not entitled to live in these areas. This is very worrying. In some parts of the country it is impossible to give a member of one's family a site to allow that person build a house. That is wrong and should be dealt with to ensure people who want to live in communities are given the opportunity to do so.

Decentralisation has been mentioned. Some may say decentralisation has been a disaster. If anybody wants to go to Carrick-on-Shannon and ask the people who were decentralised to offices of the Department of Social Protection, they will say it was the greatest thing that happened them in their lifetime.

Many of them had lived in Dublin and worked in the Civil Service for 20 or 30 years. Those who moved say they have a much better quality of life, with better services, a less stressful life and have every amenity available to them within five or ten minutes. It is the same for any of those who have moved under decentralisation. It may pose problems particularly for senior civil servants, but people should be given the opportunity to move and the programme should be brought back into full force again. While some claim it has been a failure, the way to find out whether something has been a failure is to talk to the people who have moved who will answer the question very positively.

We need to consider other forms of sustainable development, including energy sustainability which is now coming into focus. We now find that those who talk about sustainability are in many cases those who lodge the objections to green projects. They will be shouting from the two sides of their mouths, one day talking about production of green energy and the next day NIMBY, not in my back yard, comes into play very quickly. The ESB will also need to be tackled to allow small generators access to the national grid rather than having to wait between two and five years for connection. This attitude is wrong and will not help the sustainability of any of our communities. It would also bring good jobs, although not large numbers of them, and help to sustain communities.

As one who lives close to the Border, I recognise there is not great sustainability of Border communities. Infrastructure, including hospitals and third level facilities, are being put in place but are not open to the wider catchment area and are basically cut off by the Border, a matter that needs to be addressed.

When considering the national spatial strategy we should ask how we maintain our communities. How can we ensure the country develops throughout and not just along the eastern seaboard and around our major cities? The only way is to have a bias in favour of developing smaller towns and villages to ensure they will be sustainable in the long term. If the national spatial strategy is to be successful, it must have regard to the needs of the communities that are to be served rather than looking at the ideal situation in theory which does not work in practice.