Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have deep concerns about the new national planning framework. I feel as a Government we have failed. We seem to continue with the narrative that all roads need to lead to Dublin. Under this revised framework, which only comes out every six years and has just been published, there will be no change in this idea. We set out figures for the regions and cities, including Dublin. The plans are Dublin-centric and Dublin-heavy. The population and housing increases envisioned for regional cities are paltry compared with those envisioned for Dublin.

We cannot constantly expect more and more people to live in Dublin when we need people to live all over Ireland. This is good for climate change, regional balance and jobs. With the roll-out of fibre broadband, people can work from anywhere and everywhere. Yet, our targets are abysmal. Over 165,000 houses were built in the past five years. Dublin city only represents about 10% of the population, yet 33% of those houses were built in that area. Cork city represents 4.4% of the population, but only 2.7% of the houses built were built there. In my county, Clare, we built only 500 houses a year for the past five years, even though our population is increasing by thousands every year.

I want to acknowledge that, thanks to my colleague and former party leader, Deputy Eamon Ryan, the national planning framework has, for the first time, a provision that takes the national renewable energy targets and provides proper regional targets for renewable energy. At least we got the energy side of things right with regard to regional balance, but we have completely failed in other respects. I am disappointed by my colleagues in government, in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, for allowing this to happen. For the next six years, we again have big plans for Dublin but are neglecting the regional areas.

The Green Party fought tooth and nail but we failed to get the Government parties to listen. We do not all live in Dublin. We all want to live in other places and we have to provide choices. We are failing when it comes to delivering on housing outside of the cities. The vision in the national planning framework continues with the same old same old that all roads lead to Dublin.