Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the final section of this Bill I wish to say a few words about the national planning framework. We are an island on the edge of Europe and we need to behave as if we want to become connected to Europe and not become just a place to take nice holidays. A key part of this national planning framework is to develop Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford as points of economic and population growth. Nobody is saying that all towns need to be capital cities, which is wrong, but each county has a capital that can be connected to. I believe this aspect is missing from the plan. We need to focus on infrastructure, transport, job creation and rural Ireland. I want to bring this issue into the discussion because it is all connected to most of today's amendments. I am saying this now because I may not speak at the very end of the debate. It is about quality of life. I want to explain this for the Minister of State because I believe we are passing a plan here today and yet we are told that we cannot speak at the end of it. The Minister of State is aware that we had a launch of this plan a few weeks ago. I believe that we are creating a new politics here now. A plan can never be launched without all parties taking part in this, so today I ask that anything else to do with the national planning framework would be agreed with all Senators and that it would be launched by every party. It does not matter which party is in Government, everyone should participate in it. The reason I bring this issue up is because of an article I read in The Irish Timesthis week. I was concerned to see that it was revealed under a freedom of information request that a last minute intervention was made. I must bring this to the attention of the Minister of State because it applies to the plan.

The article said:

In a draft of the plans circulated in late January, a senior official at the Department of the Taoiseach emailed the Department of Public Expenditure to state: “It’s weak on the South-East

[...]

"Also, the TU [technological university] for the South-East needs to be singled out as a priority given the south east has no university.

"Could suggest it as a possible Irish campus of the new European University being contemplated.”

The final version of the plan included a stand-alone section on a new “technological university for the southeast”, to be formed from the merger of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and the Institute of Technology Carlow.

It also contains a reference to it participating in a network of European universities.

While I welcome this intervention because it has a direct impact on my constituency, I might have made the suggestions in this Chamber had I been given the chance. We were not given the chance because we were told there would be delays. It is not good enough and that is why this can never happen again here. I put it to the Minister of State that we are practising new politics and we can never allow that to happen again. I could not let this go today without highlighting my concerns. This only happened one week ago and yet Senators were told that we could not address this in the Seanad.