Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There have been some very valuable contributions regarding LUTS, which worked very well in two iterations. CASP came afterwards and it worked exceptionally well. People have forgotten it now because they want to forget it in many ways. It opened a rail line from Cork to Midleton, the first rail line opened in over 100 years in Ireland. It was a significant development in a very unusual space in 2003 and 2004. It was part of the CASP. There is the idea of an overarching body, with members of the local authority having an input into plans on both sides. This was very important as CASP failed with the building of Mahon Point. It created a nightmare scenario where it sucked the life from the city centre for a shopping centre development on a motorway. It may have made sense commercially but it killed the city centre in Cork. It failed in that respect but when a plan has a collective body, with local authority members, it can tie transport and other issues to look at the bigger picture.

We should acknowledge what was the CASP area. It went from Midleton almost to Macroom and from Fermoy almost to Kinsale. It took in 385,000 people. It considered the strategic planning of the area; it is where IDA Ireland sold Cork. It did not make a plan on the 100,000 people in the city but rather than those contained in the CASP. We need to tie something in where that kind of body with an overarching input can be looked at. It has worked and proven itself. Cork became a role model in many ways of how local government should work. That was until we decided it did not work and came up with something else. We must now look at tying it all together to ensure we can learn from CASP and develop a new plan for the region. It will have 400,000 people.