Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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Question 130: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the progress made in implementation of the national spatial strategy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30406/05]

Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The national spatial strategy, NSS, is a 20-year strategic planning framework published in 2002 aimed at achieving more balanced regional development. Substantial progress has by now been made at national level with the strategy, which is having an increasing influence on policies and programmes across a number of Departments and agencies such as the Department of Finance, Department of Transport, Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the development agencies. At regional level, a key policy bridge between national development priorities and local planning has been put in place with the adoption in mid-2004 of regional planning guidelines, RPG's.

At county and city level, strategic land use and planning strategies for the Cork, Waterford and Sligo gateways are in place, while the Limerick and Galway strategies have been prepared and are awaiting adoption. Other strategies for gateways are in preparation and should be in place by the end of this year and over the course of 2006.

Some practical examples of implementation progress to date include the incorporation of a requirement by the Department of Finance in capital envelope agreements with spending Departments that there is demonstration of how investments are being prioritised to implement the NSS; the Government's decision in July 2005 that the regional dimension of next national development plan, on which work is now starting, will be broadly based on the NSS; the recognition of the priorities of the NSS and regional planning guidelines in the ten-year investment plan for transport, to be published shortly; the €90 million investment in the Mallow-Cork-Midleton commuter rail system now being implemented following on the Cork area strategic plan which will open up a new 20,000 home development corridor for Cork over the next 15 years; the new objective of Dublin City development plan to ramp up housing output in the city to cut down on urban sprawl and long distance commuting; and in Sligo, a series of private sector hotel, leisure, retail and commercial developments, totalling around €200 million in value, have all commenced since its designation as a gateway.

Key ongoing and future work in implementing the NSS include ensuring that the strategy continues to shape the macro-investment agenda which will continue to require a concerted effort, co-ordinated across Departments and their agencies, with a particular focus on driving the accelerated development of the gateways with the support of the necessary investment, particularly in the new NDP period supporting the development of the NSS gateways whereby a major study has been undertaken of their potential for accelerated development in housing, commercial and employment terms and the key infrastructure priorities that will be necessary to facilitate such development — similar work is also being undertaken in relation to the hubs identified in the NSS and work on a feasibility study to further develop the concept of an Atlantic gateways corridor, with enhanced linkages and networking between Cork, Galway, Limerick-Shannon and Waterford is also nearing completion; considerable attention is also being given to the cross-Border aspects of the implementation of the NSS in conjunction with the department of regional development in Northern Ireland, with particular emphasis on the linked gateway of Derry-Letterkenny and cross-Border elements of the regional planning guidelines for the Border region; and proposals are also being developed to put in place a monitoring framework to report on progress in implementing the NSS, with a special emphasis on up-to-date regional population and housing projections that take account of the latest CSO national population estimates which suggest a national population of up to 5 million by 2020.