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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 Feb 2018

Vol. 965 No. 8

Project Ireland 2040: Statements (Resumed)

This is a significant change. For the first time we are trying to match our ambition for the way in which the country should develop with €116 billion worth of investment. This is very ambitious. The Acting Chairman and I have sat through many a development plan or strategic plan for the country that did not have a brass ha'penny put in behind it. This time those things are joined together. It is a significant change. It means we are moving away from the developer-led model that has afflicted the city and country for so many years, where we see houses built on a sprawling basis without the matching services coming together. This time we are looking to build a compact city anticipating in advance the services that will be needed to deliver them.

It is not a policy of one for everyone in the audience. It recognises we need to grow particular areas that have the capacity to be strong and regionally vibrant, but it does not leave behind our rural hinterland. It recognises that half of the growth in population has to be entirely outside the major cities, be it Dublin or any of the other four cities.

I represent Dublin, and it is exciting that we are now anticipating not just 140,000 extra homes that will be built but an investment of €7 billion in public transport, with a metro link, BusConnects and extensions of the DART. We anticipate bringing water from the Shannon to provide for our city. We anticipate investments in our ports and airports. We anticipate investment in our cultural institutions to make them a big part of our city. For the first time, we will create a technological university for Dublin, which will be a very exciting applied research college that will offer new opportunities for people.

We have shown huge ambition around apprenticeships, skills and traineeships, concerns that were neglected for too long. Besides that, we are also anticipating major investment in those other colleges that are so important. We are looking at the sustainability of the city, and despite what the Green Party has said, this plan anticipates the decarbonisation of electricity generation. It anticipates moving away from diesel as one of our fuels. It anticipates electric vehicles playing an important part. Most of all, however, it anticipates compact development. To make that a reality, in another first, we will have a national agency with the capacity to put together the tracts of land that will be so important to achieving compact development. Not only will we have the necessary arteries of infrastructure, we will have the capacity to pull those compact tracts of land together and develop them in a sustainable way. There is a lot of fresh thinking here. I was disappointed in the tone of the debate, because this is really important to our city.

The area of health is one about which I know the Acting Chairman, Deputy Broughan, is particularly concerned. For the first time ever, we are planning a new elective-only hospital for Dublin, which makes eminent sense. It will not have an accident and emergency department, and will not contend with the associated impact. We are anticipating moving our three maternity hospitals to a much safer co-location with a general hospital, so that women who are in situations where their lives or health are under threat have access to the full range of services, which is the proper approach. We are building a national forensic hospital up to state-of-the-art conditions, and a national children's hospital. These are really important investments in a city that has suffered from lack of adequate hospital beds to meet our challenges.

Another thing that I find really exciting is that it is very much bottom-up. Some people criticise the idea that there are funds to encourage imaginative solutions for our town centres. It was interesting that in the very same breath as those criticisms, there were calls for imaginative ways to see our town centres grow. What better way than to ask those whose lives, commitment and understanding is rooted in those towns to come up with the ideas, whether urban or rural regeneration is required? That is a very exciting approach to take, because it recognises that we are all part of making this a reality. It is not going to be designed in Marlborough Street or the Custom House. It has to have a community commitment.

I would like to say a few words about the importance of talent in the realisation and conception of this plan. The only way in which we can achieve balanced regional development is on the basis of the quality of the talent that we create. I used to be the Minister at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and I saw how difficult it is to attract new industrial development unless networks and hubs of skill, talent, enterprise capability and research capacity have been built. That is what attracts and builds, whether overseas investment is coming in or indigenous enterprise is innovating the products that can drive success, be it in food or engineering. We are seeing those success stories. We need to root them in major investment in the talent base of our regions.

At the heart of this is the concept of developing technological universities. They will become vehicles for carrying a much stronger applied research capability and a much more balanced mix, while still rooted in their origins, namely, developing technical skill. They will be rooted in those origins, but will spread their influence into the higher reaches of education and encourage people to travel that road with them. I believe that those hubs of skill will be very important in realising our ambition for balanced regional development.

Equally, the envisaged investment of €8.4 billion in our school system is crucially important. It represents an investment of about €9,000 for every child in our school system. These investments are really crucial, and not just to meet the needs of a growing population. We must build the school laboratories that allow our children to develop their skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, and to apply digital technology within the education system. It is very empowering, of student and teacher alike, to embed digital technologies in learning.

It also anticipates the PE facilities that we will need. We want to see people grow in a resilient way, both mentally and physically. We need to invest in our schools, invest in their leadership and provide modern facilities. This plan recognises the importance of this investment. That investment in the education sector has not been there in the past. We continue to chase a moving target, trying to keep up with education needs that are racing ahead of us. This plan anticipates the sort of things that the 21st century school will need. It lays the foundations and commits to the funding that will allow that vision to become a reality.

I can fully understand that the House will greet a ten-year plan of great national ambition with a degree of scepticism. I think it is natural that people will complain and ask when they will see these results, or whether the plan is a reality. However, I have been in politics a long time, and I rarely see Governments seeking to plan in any realistic way beyond the next election or the next political hurdle. This is a genuine attempt to do something different. This is anticipating the Ireland that we will see in ten years. God knows how many Governments will be in place between now and then, but it is a genuine attempt to shape and anticipate the Ireland we want to see in 2027 and 2040. How do we go about getting that?

At the root of the plan are the right concepts: make our country compact in its development; make it regionally spread; and make it environmentally sustainable. Build it on a base of talent and fulfil the potential of each young person, each community and each reason. These are the fundamental building blocks of any long-term plan for our country. There will be critics, sceptics and people asking why some concern or other was left out, but the underlying drive of what we are trying to do is unique in my lifetime. The Acting Chairman will agree that it is very frustrating to draw up development plans, knowing in one's heart of hearts that those projects are never going to happen. They are objectives on paper. We now have the chance to match the objectives, worthy as they have always been, with hard cash and commitment. I hope that the plan will commend itself to the House, given time. I am sure there will be short-term political criticism of course, but what we are trying to achieve here is the right thing for the country to do.

I have to say, I am very disappointed that all the time we are getting to speak about this monumentally comprehensive piece of work is ten minutes. The plan is based on research that has been hosted on the national planning framework website since 24 January. There is a paper on this site called "Prospects for Irish Regions and Counties". Its basic thesis is that larger industrial conglomerations in centres of high population density result in a higher net output per worker. As such, the proposition on which this plan is based is that future developments should be concentrated in four cities, namely, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.

In the report, everywhere outside of these cities is described by the pejorative term "sprawl". The report claims that this kind of concentration will result in a higher national growth, and will also lead to regional growth up to 40 km to 80 km from regional cities. The author of this report quotes Government studies carried out in 1996, 2002 and 2009 to support the link between density and higher output. Interestingly, on page 78 the author includes a scatter plot showing industrial output per worker. He measures this against population density on a county-by-county basis.

The idea was that when taking output per worker and population density, it was expected that as the density increased, the output per worker would increase. The plot purports to show that net output per worker increases with population density from €140,000 at the lowest to approximately €240,000 at the highest. There are a number of errors in the plot and it is extraordinary that the counties are not identified. Strangely, Dublin is omitted from the graph, even though it has a significantly higher population density than any other county. Leaving Dublin, the most densely populated county, out means that, scientifically, the claim is baseless. What they tried to do was take data from the census of industrial production for the years 2002 to 2006 and measure it against the population census of 2016 for some peculiar reason. This is shoddy work by any account.

County Mayo has the second lowest population density in the State. The county has half the population of Galway city and county and just over half the density at 23 people per sq. km as opposed to 41 per sq. km in Galway and its industrial workforce is significantly less than half that of Galway, yet gross industrial output in Mayo is equal to and in some years exceeds that of Galway. If the inputs into production in Galway are taken into account, net industrial output in Mayo is one and a third to one and a half times that in Galway. In other words, Mayo, with a low population density, is producing one and a half times what is being produced in Galway per worker. This is not unique to that county. I am sure Deputy Healy will be interested to learn that rural Tipperary has a net output per worker which is a multiple of that of Waterford city and county. Kildare with a density of 131 persons per sq. km has a higher net output per worker than Dublin city with a density of 4,687 per sq. km.

What blows the mind on the theory on which all this crumbling castle is based is that the comparison could not be starker between Mayo, which has the second lowest population density in the State, and Dublin city, which has the highest, as the output per industrial worker in Mayo is approximately twice that of Dublin. The thesis started out with a theory that industrial workers produce more in cities. The Government then published a major foundation document, yet according to one person's analysis, the figures have been skewed to get an answer that is not there. Furthermore, industry in Mayo is scattered around the county. Coca-Cola is based in Ballina, Baxter in Castlebar, Allergan in Westport and McHales in Ballinrobe. They are not all agglomerated in one part of the county. I am beginning to wonder, because I have not had the opportunity to read the entire document and second guess all the research, whether it is based on a false premise. If so, perhaps the future will not turn out the way people think it will.

Unfortunately, ten minutes is not sufficient even to start dealing with all the issues but I would like to address two specific issues. I would love to see a spatial plan that would eliminate the horrendous social deprivation in my native city of Dublin. I would love to be able to say in 20 years that all the people in Dublin, not just those in the leafy suburbs, live in a society that is driven more by industrial output than the drugs trade and that the scourge of social deprivation has been dealt with and similar comments apply to Limerick, Tipperary town and all the black spots that we mapped so carefully in government under the RAPID programme. If that could be done, we would have a plan worthy of consideration. There is a great deal of repetition and contradiction in the plan and one would think it was written to confuse. There is no mention of a great plan to deal with social deprivation, which is a scandal before all of us but which we tend to wish would go away. I recall as Minister with responsibility for urban deprivation that I could not get the media to hang around the House and be interested in it but that does not mean we should fail to be concerned.

I refer to the second issue that must be examined. Rarely in life is the future a repetition of the past. I studied science and I recall lecturers discussing the assumptions of late 19th century scientists about light and its nature and so on. The theory was blown sky high out of the water. We know from previous experience that most people plan on the basis of what happened in the past and not on what is likely to happen in the future. The visionaries are those who see what is happening. If the Minister visits rural areas in counties Galway or Meath, he knows that as soon as people get the fibre cable, the necessity for them to be agglomerated every day will suddenly disappear. I love coming up to Dublin. I come up because of my job most weeks but I would come up anyway to go to Croke Park because I love going to matches there because they are great social events. I like coming to the city now and again for social events but I would prefer to live where I live. Many high net worth individuals whose main work is done on a computer and who work worldwide right through the time zones will not work in conventional offices. They work from wherever they are. Will they choose to sit in traffic jams in the morning before arriving to work in a cramped office or will they choose to live in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean or the mountains? That is the future but the Government is planning for the past. This plan is fundamentally flawed in its concept and I ask the Minister of State to check the figures I quoted, which are now on the record. I hope I get a detailed response as to why these figures are wrong. The graph does not give us the counties.

I wish to share time with Deputies Quinlivan and Martin Kenny.

Climate change is the major issue of our time and it is relevant in the context of this plan. The plan contains a substantial commentary on climate change, which is a local, national and global issue. The NPF is a series of vague aspirations which lack clarity and vision.

The Government plan states that there will be energy research funding into solar and biogas but these are well established industries worldwide and particularly across Europe. We do not need to conduct a whole new batch of research into these as they are already up and running and working. We need to specify what energy sources will replace fossil fuel. There is a proposal to stop using peat and coal by 2030 and to convert the coal-burning plant at Moneypoint at a cost of €1 billion but it does not say what will replace it. There is a proposal to phase out peat by 2030 and that will affect Laois-Offaly, Westmeath and the whole midlands. Again, though, there is no outline of what will replace it and there is no plan to establish an indigenous biomass growing industry in counties such as Laois, Offaly, Westmeath or anywhere else. Bord na Móna imports biomass from across the globe at present and it has imported it from as far away as Indonesia. It is nuts and it is not sustainable from an environmental point of view given the carbon miles that this will clock up. It also intends to buy a biomass plant in the United States. Why is the Government, as a shareholder on behalf of the taxpayer, not insisting there is a plant built in the midlands to process biomass such as willow, which could be grown by local farmers and would create local jobs, to be used in local generation plants such as Longford or Edenderry in west Offaly?

What about biogas? It is mentioned but there is no clarity on if or how it will be established. There is huge potential in biogas and we have some of the best resources in Europe with our large farming sector. Biogas would deal with the present problem of slurry and we could use that and other waste, such as food waste, to produce electricity, heat and transport fuel. This would provide a boost to farm incomes and bring jobs into rural areas across the country. The Government plan is for 500,000 electric vehicles by 2030 and that is welcome but there is no mention of how this will be achieved. We only have 2,000 on the road currently, among the lowest in Europe, and no certainty around the charging network so how can we achieve this target?

I see nothing about local authorities in the plan. Local authorities are the arm of government that interacts with local communities, as the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Damien English, will know. We need to take climate change seriously and there is a big role for local authorities, something Sinn Féin has been pushing for a long time. There is a need for a clear plan that includes local authorities as well as the sectors mentioned. We need specific actions and we need to specify energy sources. If we do not do this we will continue to use fossil fuels in an unsustainable way and to live in an unsustainable manner, causing damage to the environment. I ask the Government to revisit the role of local authorities and to be more specific in relation to creating a biomass and a biogas industry.

It is essential for the success of this project, and for its vision to be achieved in 20 years' time, that the national planning framework has broad, cross-party support. I am disappointed that the Government is trying to ram it through without a vote on its contents. It should be a solid, comprehensive plan for the country and not a brochure for the Fine Gael Party.

I am glad that many of the proposals which Sinn Féin mid-west representatives, including myself, suggested are included. As a representative of Limerick city, I am delighted that the M20 motorway is included in the plan but we have been promised that road before. It was the current Taoiseach who scrapped the M20 plans back in 2011, when he was Minister for Transport, so forgive me if I hold back my praise for the project as it is re-announced seven years later. I will be happy when the motorway is built, rather than when it is repackaged and reannounced. The road is needed and it will not just benefit the cities of Limerick and Cork but the whole region.

Shannon Airport is referenced six times but there are no plans to maintain it, to sustain it or to grow it. Most of the projects for my constituency are continuations of things or plans that have been previously announced. I am happy to see the Limerick 2030 project in the national development plan, as well as the Limerick to Foynes road, the Limerick to Foynes railway and the continuation of the Limerick regeneration project. We need to develop Limerick City as the major city in the mid-west region. However, Limerick suffers from a disproportionately high number of unemployment black spots and areas of deprivation and these problems require Limerick-specific solutions now, before we can plan for 20 years' time.

In January the ESRI published a major study into deprivation in 11 EU countries between 2004 and 2015, which showed a significant gap between the rate of deprivation experienced by vulnerable adults in Ireland and that of others surveyed. In the national development plan for the next ten years, the word "poverty" does not appear once. Maybe a focus on that issue would mean Limerick would not have 18 electoral divisions classed as unemployment black spots, which is twice as many as in any other part of the country. The average unemployment rate for these areas is 43% and eight of ten unemployment black spots are in Limerick city. These figures are stark and we have not reduced them over the years. It is also more than double the combined figure for Dublin, Galway and Cork cities, which is truly shocking. The infrastructure needs to be put in place so that people can stay, work and live in Limerick, which specifically means more social and affordable housing, better transport links and essential services such as broadband.

I am glad to see many of the suggestions made by Sinn Féin's mid-west representatives, which are in the policy document we have launched, included in the plan. I hope that in 20 years' time, if Fianna Fáil has not bankrupted the country again, some of these important projects will have been delivered.

It feels a bit pointless to be talking about a new Government plan, especially one with such a long-term aim, because this Government is great for planning but very poor at implementation. Maybe we need a plan to deliver on all the other promises the Government has made. A Vision for Change is 11 years old and we are far from implementing that, while our community services are not in place. This Government does business by press statements, column inches, headlines and executive summaries, which are far more important than addressing the fundamental failings in our society or focusing on the people affected. Where is the plan to address the growing poverty in our country? This certainly is not it.

Much of the talk around the plan is that it is to address population growth in the future, as if we were anywhere near meeting current demand for the most basic things such as a home, health care, education and a decent standard of living. This is a plan for tomorrow, which is fine but the hundreds of thousands of people in this State experiencing serious hardship need a plan for today and they need action. With this Government, the problems will always be fixed tomorrow and we know where tomorrow goes.

Our existing infrastructure is falling apart because the Government refuses to invest. In my area of east Cork, the roads are in a drastic state outside the major routes, with councils paying out damages to motorists. The headline is good for the Government and €116 billion seems a very impressive sum, but is it impressive? Over 23 years, it is just €5 billion a year. Some 10% of the money is said to be going to housing but, given how little the State has spent on housing in the past few years, this is the very least we should be spending. In any case, it does not amount to much over 23 years, during which time the population will grow and grow.

I welcome the €1 billion for flood defences but I wonder if it is enough. We must consider the massive need for new housing, regional urban development, population growth and the impending severe and dangerous weather conditions brought on by climate change, not to mention the fact that flood defences are completely insufficient to deal with the problems we have currently. There is €500 million for the Defence Forces but this is not so that the members of the Defence Forces can be paid a living wage, rather than having to survive on the scraps of family income supplement, FIS, and other payments as they bravely serve our country with honour. I expect that the money is to live up to the growing demand of Europe that we join its army and engage in the imperial rattling of old Europe. No thanks. That is not development as anyone else might see it. The bottom line is that the Government cannot be trusted to do what it says in its press releases. This plan is a glossy press release by a do-nothing Government which treats the Irish people like they are fools.

I have always believed in indicative planning. From the time of T.K. Whitaker in the 1950s and the years of Seán Lemass, having objectives for a nation is important even if some or many of those objectives are not achieved, as happened with the last plan from 2002. The scale of Ireland's infrastructure deficit is vast. There was no reference by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to their roles in Ireland's lost decade, when Ireland did not have a plan and when we cut back on the infrastructure we had.

For many years since the 2007-08 disastrous banking crisis I raised the issue of the deficit at the budget and finance committees. The capital programme had been slashed and was so low that we did not even reach depreciation levels, which is the 2% level that is needed just to keep a bit of paint on the house and the doors working. It seems extraordinary that the Taoiseach, who is one of the key people responsible for this deficit, is now trying to present Fine Gael and himself as great capital planners.

The damage that was done in the last ten years, however, will long affect and hold back the State, urban and rural. In an earlier contribution the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, tried his best but I believe that many people see this plan as an election manifesto of aspirational dreams. The Taoiseach is trying to sell it as a national project. The fundamental conclusion of most of us who ploughed through the national planning framework and then Ireland 2040 - Our Plan is that the aspirations are there, with €116 billion set to be dedicated to the plan, but we have grave concerns that many of the projects that should have been achieved in the last decade are still not going to be achieved over the next decade, especially in areas such as housing and health. Deputies have already referred to this. The great unknown, of course, is what will happen with Brexit. If GDP, or GNI, is significantly damaged then it may be very difficult to allocate 4% or more, which is outlined at the start of the national development plan, for capital projects each year up to 2027.

I opposed decentralisation and the longtime core policy of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil of holding back and restricting Dublin’s development as a major city region and the development of the other cities in Ireland. I totally agree with the plan's focus on Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. I had expected more ambitious infrastructure targets for each major city. I agree with the designation of Sligo, Letterkenny and Athlone. Drogheda should have had full city status.

In budget after budget Dublin was neglected very badly. Professor Declan Kiberd has said that Dublin is a city dominated by a periphery. When every other city from Athens to Madrid and up to Oslo was enhancing its capital or main cities with great public transport systems and major public facilities, Dublin became something of a backwater up to the turn of this century. Lord Norman Foster, the famous so-called "starchitect", rightly says that premier city regions are always defined by their infrastructure; first class transport, health, education, public housing and so on. Unfortunately, by that measure Dublin has never been allowed - by majorities in this House - to become a premier European capital city and we sometimes hear of the disappointment of visitors about the lack of transport and civic space infrastructure in Dublin.

I agree with the plan's approach to concentrate development in major growth centres throughout the State. I note the demographic predictions for an extra 1 million people. For some time EUROSTAT has said that Ireland will have a population of 5.5 million by 2050 and that the UK will have a population of more than 80 million. Depending on the outcome of Brexit there may be a significant migration between Britain and Ireland. It will be interesting to see if the 2050 figure may even be higher.

Ireland continues to be an emigration nation. Had the disasters of the 1980s and of the banking crisis not happened, Ireland's population would probably be well past the 5 million mark in the Republic and heading back to the population of Ireland at the start of the 1840s.

I am aware that the State is divided into three regions to facilitate EU investment but what is wrong with just using Leinster, Munster and Connacht and with the three northern counties in close liaison with the counties of Ulster? Leinster’s population is now around 2.4 million with the four Dublin counties heading for 1.5 million. As a Dublin representative I would like to see one of the tasks of this plan being to consolidate and expand the Dublin city region up to 2027 and 2040 as a premier metropolitan district for the whole country.

I ask Deputy Broughan to propose the adjournment of the debate.

I move the adjournment.

Debate adjourned.
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