Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 15 Oct 1993

Vol. 434 No. 7

National Development Plan 1994-99: Statements (Resumed).

Mr. Cox

I want to make a number of points both of criticism and of welcome in regard to the National Development Plan. I welcome the emphasis on local initiatives, although I have some questions about structure and form. It is important that people who live in unemployment black spots and who feel marginalised should be made to feel included in a process like this. One is entirely behind that characteristic of the plan. After enormous pressure we were grudgingly conceded a debate. However, I am extremely disappointed at the manner in which the Government has marginalised this House, the Seanad and the relevant committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas from the process we are engaged in.

In terms of economic documents that will emerge in the lifetime of this Government or between now and the end of the decade, this plan is probably the single most important planning exercise undertaken in the history of this State and we all, as politicians, share a responsibility for articulating a view about the evolution of our own society over time. It would be worth the Government's while to engage the Opposition in a constructive dialogue on this. It is a grave failure on the part of the Government that it did not do so.

The incremental exclusion of the democratic process and the legitimate voice of the people by a Government with the largest majority in the history of the State is a disgrace which will have to be addressed. This House has become irrelevant, it gets to rubberstamp things post hoc. It is now so irrelevant that in regard to the National Economic Plan we do not even get to express ourselves in the form of a resolution, nor do we have a right to hear a reply from the Government to the various statements being made here. In any event, we are discussing this after the horse has bolted because, as everybody knows, the plan has been in Brussels for a full week. In all the major areas of economic policy, including incomes policy and wage determination, the parliamentary process has been reduced to the role of a mere bystander. That is wrong. It particularly behoves a Government with the largest majority in the history of the State to seek a constructive role for this House so that the democratic process is not excluded and marginalised in a plan which in other respects addresses itself to those kinds of issues in the wider society.

The central thesis of the plan itself is set forth as job creation. Yesterday the Taoiseach said he was being neither pessimistic nor optimistic but was being realistic when he spoke about job numbers. It is my belief that a radical appetite for a pro-jobs tax reform combined with a concerted attack on poverty traps and a rugged insistence on wage competitiveness is the key to translating more growth into more jobs. This plan could be a lot more ambitious on the jobs front. In this context, the plan is flawed and unambitious because it signals in advance an intention to have a "steady as you go" policy on the wages front, a tinkering with tax reform and with poverty traps.

This is an economy where real wages for those at work in the private sector have gone up by 10 per cent, where real wages for those at work in the public sector have gone up by more than 10 per cent in the last four years and where the overall level of unemployment has gone up substantially. We have to find a balance and make the long term unemployed and all the unemployed a central part of the wage bargaining process. To do that we must use the wage bargaining process as a key to translating the growth which will follow from this plan into more jobs. The Government says that the way it has framed the job targets is realistic but what it is signalling is the realism of people who have no radical stomach for the kind of pro-jobs driven reform of wage bargaining, of tax and of welfare which could deliver a greater jobs output and a greater return for our money.

On the industry programme, the plan talks about creating 11,000 gross jobs per annum in indigenous industry and 9,000 gross jobs per annum in inward-bound mobile investment. Twenty thousand gross jobs per annum is not a bad target. It is clearly difficult, in a small open economy, to estimate the number of jobs we will lose, but this plan makes a guess. It states:

"It would be reasonable to aim towards the achievement of a net gain in manufacturing and international services and employment of the order of 5,000 jobs".

However, that is qualified by the statement that that target in the early years may not be met because of the international economic recession.

Let us take the figures at their face value. If we get 5,000 jobs per annum between 1994 and 1999, that is 30,000 jobs over those years. To get that, we will be spending £3,681 million under this programme over a very wide range of activities. That is the best case scenario, according to the Government's plan. That means the total spend per job, public and private sector, Irish and EC, will be £122,700. In terms of public spending alone between the EC and Ireland the cost per net job anticipated, if the warning in regard to the recession does not apply, will be £52,000. That is a profoundly unambitious target. It may be called a realistic target but in this context it is a fatalistic target. It is fatal to regard the spending of £52,000 of public money on each job created and gross spending of £122,700 on each net job created as value for money. This signals that the parts not included in the plan — we have been told to wait for the budget — will be bland, rhetorically committed to solving unemployment and will have none of the radical appetite required to convert growth into jobs.

I do not wish to get lost in referring to numbers but I wish to refer to a few interesting points. The Edinburgh Summit concluded with a run of numbers to be included in the financial perspective of the European Community, 1993-99, "in constant 1992 prices". The massaging process which has taken place on the Irish numbers is well illustrated in the plan when one reads the footnote at the end of every table which refers to "constant 1993 prices". There was a little modest upward massaging of the numbers from the 1992 level to the 1993 level because we were mesmerised by a particular number.

I have looked at some of the reasons for this upward massaging of the figures. In Chapter 10 there is a frank, clear and fair admission that the Community initiatives — programmes such as INTERREG and ENDIREG — from which we will get money, and from which we got money in the past, are not part of the Community support framework or part of what DG 16 and others in Brussels will work on immediately in terms of producing a Community support framework. According to the figures, we can expect to get up to £500 million from the initiative. However, this initiative is not part of the CSF — we had to include this figure because we were mesmerised by a particular number. Funding from these initiatives was omitted from the 1989-93 plan. When Charlie Haughey secured the £2.86 billion, funding from these initiatives was added in later — that is the way the European system works. The Taoiseach had to throw in the kitchen sink, including a sink which belongs to a different and later process, when he was massaging the figures. He did this because the numbers needed to be massaged. If one looks at the level of Structural Funding over the period of the previous plan and this plan, one will see that the actual funding is £5.35 billion. That is the like with like comparison. The only difference is that this plan is for six years as opposed to five years. Those numbers have all the hallmarks — when I saw the phrase "constant 1993 prices" I realised this — of having had to be massaged because we were mesmerised by a particular figure.

The plan is poor and unambitious on jobs; it signals that the Government has no stomach for the kind of things which need to be done to create more jobs from growth. The figures have been massaged to arrive at the mesmerising figure of £8 billion. Nevertheless, there are some points in the plan which I genuinely welcome. The attempt to reach out and include the long term unemployed, the marginalised etc., is worthwhile and good. However, I am doubtful about some of the structures, which seem to be very bureaucratic. All public representatives are concerned about the long term unemployed in the constituencies they represent. I hope the Government will adopt an open door policy on this issue. There should be no partisan approach adopted in terms of who is listened to etc., in regard to what is a very worth-while initiative. I should like to get an assurance in that respect.

With regard to the role of the regions, the Minister will know that my party was insistent on local government reform. The Local Government Act, 1990, enabled that reform to be introduced. We welcome the establishment of the regional authorities which follows from the legislation we insisted on when we were in Government. I welcome the role being given to these authorities in terms of monitoring and controlling regional spending. I very much welcome the publication of regional or sub-national programmes which will contain more explicit detail. This very positive and welcome development is long overdue.

With regard to gender proofing, as the House will be aware from events this week, I am one of the more articulate exponents of the desirability of gender proofing in Irish society. One has to accept with equanimity the notion that no obstacles should be put in the way of the fullest participation by women in all these programmes.

Mr. M. Smith

If that is the case, the Deputy's performance this week was not one of his best.

Mr. Cox

It is really a matter of nob-lesse oblige.

Miss Harney

He was gender mugged.

Mr. Cox

This plan is of the highest importance in terms of the life of this nation. Therefore, it is a disgrace of the highest order that this House has been marginalised and excluded so comprehensively from participation in this major, collective and substantial national exercise. The plan has sufficient quality and depth to enable it to get through the review process in Brussels with much greater ease than some of the plans I have seen submitted under a similar name by one or two other member states. The fatalistic view about the translation of the real growth which will come from this plan into modest job creation indicates an attitude on the part of the Government of "steady as she goes, we should not get radical, do not rock the boat and we will put up with the results at the end of the day". That is a fatalistic approach.

There are features of the plan which are well worth welcoming, and I have done that. If I had more time I would refer to other features in more detail. As I said, the numbers were modestly massaged to ensure that they added up to a magic lotto number which exercised our minds more comprehensively up to this than the substance of a plan worth having, worth believing in and worth pursuing. It is a pity we were not given a worth-while say in the formulation of the plan.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. M. Smith)

As this is the first time I have spoken in the House since her appointment as Leader of the Progressive Democrats, I wish publicly to congratulate Deputy Harney and wish her well. Having regard to her work up to now, we can be assured that her leadership, drive, motivation and ability will do good not only for her party but also for this entire House.

Our country and the European Community face a daunting task in making real and lasting progress towards greater economic and social cohesion. Although much has been achieved under the present Community support framework — in terms of employment in industry, tourism and other services, in substantive improvements to our roads and other infrastructure, in diversification of the rural economy and in raising the skill levels of our population — much still remains to be done. The gap to be narrowed with the more prosperous areas of the Community is still wide. Unemployment persists at intractably high levels and a substantial dependency ratio reflects our population structure. Our infrastructural base, although much improved, continues to require major investment to prevent our position on the periphery of Europe from accentuating our disadvantages.

One of the ways to address these difficulties lies in the effective use of the increased resources available to us through the new Cohesion Fund and the greatly expanded Structural Funds. We must use these funds to step up the pace of development and job creation in our economy and to equip ourselves to compete more effectively in the Single Market. The National Development Plan constitutes the framework within which we can achieve these objectives and take a dramatic step towards increased prosperity and lasting social progress for all our people.

Investment in the services for which my Department has responsibility — roads, treatment and disposal of water borne and solid wastes, water supply and urban regeneration — will exceed £2.5 billion over the period of the plan. This will pay dividends in the short term through direct and indirect employment on the schemes and in ancillary industries. In the longer term, an enhanced infrastructural base will allow us to compete effectively and promote economic and social development.

Overall, road related employment should exceed 9,000 on the construction and implementation of the programme in the years 1994 to 1999. The effects on the supply side of the wider economy will also be significant: taking the investment in transport infrastructure as a whole, a permanent 1 per cent increase in gross national product is forecast by 2003 and this translates into an increase in total employment of around 14,000 jobs. Expenditure on water and sanitary services is estimated to generate 20 direct jobs per £1 million capital investment. This translates into 2,000 jobs each year over the period of the plan. Additional indirect employment will be sustained or created in the supply and service areas. The works envisaged under the urban renewal programme are particularly labour intensive and about 3,000 direct work year jobs will be created over the duration of the plan with substantial offsite employment also. In addition, environment improvement works in run-down areas will create the necessary local conditions for investment and development.

The European Community has always attached importance to strengthening economic and social cohesion by promoting convergence between the economic and social conditions prevailing in the richer, centrally located member states, and their less affluent counterparts on the periphery. This process was accelerated during the Single European Act. The provision of substantially increased Community assistance was agreed, as was the revision of Structural Funds regulations, to concentrate and rationalise Community aid. Similar considerations influenced the outcome of the negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty which provides for economic and social cohesion to be facilitated through a series of special measures designed to assist peripheral regions in raising the standard of their infrastructure to a level where they can compete successfully.

If economic development is to be achieved equally amongst the regions of Europe, transport infrastructure is of crucial importance. We cannot change our peripheral location but we can develop our transport infrastructure to mitigate the effects. It is vital that we do so if we are to expand our opportunities for economic development.

In the past, limited resources, and the sheer scale of investment required, left us with transport infrastructure inadequate for the needs of the economy. These problems could not simply be wished away. The integrated transport development strategy which has been delivered in the years since 1989 under the Operational Programme on Peripherality has been the turning point.

More than £900 million has been invested in transport infrastructure in that period, attracting £600 million in Community assistance. As a result, very substantial progress has been achieved in developing our road network. A total of 27 major improvement projects, involving 130 kilometres of national primary roads, have been completed since 1989 at a cost of £360 million. Projects completed include the Clonee, Athlone, Newbridge, Glanmire, Bray/Shankill, Bunratty by-passes and I had the pleasure of opening the Dunleer by-pass earlier this week. At present, more than 20 major projects are under construction costing almost £500 million, and involving the construction and improvement of almost 200 kilometres of motorway and dual and single carriageway. Schemes underway include the Northern Cross route in Dublin, Minish-Curraglass in Kerry and the Leixlip/Maynooth/Kilcock, Longford, Mullingar, Portlaoise and Kilcullen by-passes. Smaller improvement works have been carried out on 160 kilometres of the national primary network, and 1,700 kilometres of roads supporting industrial and tourism development have been improved.

The primary objectives of transport investment in the National Development Plan over the period 1994 to 1999 will be to improve internal and access transport infrastructure and facilities, and the reliability of the transport system. The development strategy for national primary routes will focus on four key corridors connecting the major centres of population, key commercial seaports and the three State airports. The corridors are built around the routes which form part of the trans-European road network proposed by the European Commission but also include a series of link routes which serve more peripheral and remote areas, or which provide key links between routes included in the network. This approach is a logical development of that adopted under the existing operational programme which focused investment in a number of priority sections of the national primary road network. While much work is ongoing on these sections, and much remains to be done, we will be using the increased resources available under the National Development Plan to progress outwards along the route network.

I know there will be a particular welcome for the inclusion of the western corridor connecting Letterkenny, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Rosslare. This will provide access from the northwest, west and midwest regions to the southern sea corridor ports of Waterford and Rosslare. Both ports have received substantial investment under the operational programme as strategic links for Ro-Ro, Lo-Lo and passenger traffic to the European mainland. The development of the western corridor in linking these ports to the population centres of the western seaboard is an excellent example of integrated transport planning networking different transport modes.

The downstream crossing of the River Lee is the most vital element in the completion of the new road network in the Cork area and will have a significant impact in improving road access to Cork port. It will substantially complete the road aspects of the Cork Land Use and Transportation Study.

There will also be investment in national primary routes not included in the corridors so as to tackle deficiencies in these roads and facilitate development. The overall objective, as stated in the Government's response to the Culliton report, will be to complete the development of the national primary network by 2005 and to ensure a minimum level of service which will provide an inter-urban travel speed of 80 kilometres per hour.

Between now and 1999 national secondary roads will benefit from the investment programme which will be almost double that of the past five years. Special attention will be paid to the development of the two routes which form a part of the strategic corridors — the N52 Dundalk to Nenagh route linking routes N1, N2, N3, N4, N6 and N7 and the N80 Athlone to Rosslare route linking routes N6, N7, N9 and N11. Both cross country routes are of particular importance, especially for commercial traffic. Significant investment will be undertaken also in a number of other routes of economic importance such as the N70, the N56, the N71 the N59, the N61 and the N76.

County and regional roads play an important economic role in Ireland because of our relatively low level of urbanisation and extensive and low density rural settlement patterns. These roads are the vital transport arteries of the local economy and are often the sole means of access for economic activity. Their improvement is vital for the development of agriculture, industry and tourism on which the rural economy is heavily dependent. I am particularly happy that the Government agreed an expenditure of £475 million on these roads under the National Development Plan. I know that this will be warmly welcomed by many people and organisations, especially the sub-regional committees which asked for increased funding for these roads. This followed the widest possible consultation and I am glad that in the contributions, while there have been arguments about who was consulted, no Member argued against any of those provisions or suggested alternatives.

Investment on that scale requires a new approach to the funding of non-national roads, to conform with EC requirements and to ensure the best possible return for local areas. For individual Community co-financed projects, therefore, I will be proposing a scheme of specific grants to local authorities for improvement works which have a significant and quantifiable economic impact, particularly on industrial, tourism and rural development. Discretionary road grants will be retained for maintenance and other non-co-financed expenditure.

There is widespread acceptance of the need for improvement in transportation in Dublin if the city is to continue to function effectively. A total investment of £330 million is, proposed in the plan to implement the recommendations of the Dublin Transportation Initiative. A balanced and integrated package of measures will be undertaken to improve the transport system in the greater Dublin area. Public transport will be significantly enhanced by the development of a light rail transit system, the implementation of quality bus corridors, the upgrading of suburban services on existing rail lines, the introduction of integrated ticketing and a range of infrastructure and other support measures. The Dublin ring road, including the south eastern motorway from Sandyford to Shankill, will be completed to provide a complete western by-pass of the city, and an efficient access route to Dublin port will also be constructed. No increase in arterial road capacity will be permitted within the motorway ring, though some new road construction will be undertaken, where justified, on environmental or safety grounds or to support economic development and regeneration.

There will also be an emphasis on improved management of the transport system. Measures will include enhanced traffic management and enforcement systems, better signposting and road markings, improved facilities for cyclists, pedestrians and disabled people, and traffic calming measures in the city centre and residential areas.

There has been a recognition for many years, both at European Community and national levels, that the environmental dimension is an integral component of economic policies. Traditional views on the relationships between environment and development had a negative ring: expenditure to maintain environmental quality was sometimes seen as a drag on economic development, or economic development could be viewed as running counter to environmental interests. Either way, economic and environmental concerns appeared to be in opposition.

The National Development Plan provides a unique opportunity to underline how far out of date such views are. It has been prepared within a framework of policy and action which has changed in significant ways even since the previous National Development Plan was published in 1989. In 1987, for example, the Single European Act provided that environmental protection requirements should be a component of the Community's other policies. A much stronger statement is included in the Maastricht Treaty: "Environmental Protection requirements must be integrated into the definition and implementation of Community policies". That more explicit obligation has also found expression in the new Structural Funds Framework Regulation which requires member states to present a status report on the national environmental situation and an assessment of the impact, in terms of sustainable development, of the strategies and operations covered by the plan.

A Community strategy to achieve a sustainable development path, not just for the sake of the environment but also for the sake of the continued efficiency of economic sectors interacting with the environment, was set out in the Fifth Environment Action Programme adopted in 1992. In Ireland, the main principles upon which Community policy is now grounded had already been given national expression in the Environment Action Programme published by the Government in January 1990. We committed ourselves then to significant environmental action over the decade, taking particular account of the concept of sustainable development, the principle of precautionary action and integration of environmental considerations in all policy areas.

The National Plan gives effect to the reaffirmation of the principle of integration which was contained in the Programme for a Partnership Government and to our expressed intention to speed up implementation of the Environment Action Programme. Our approach, therefore, is synthesis of Community and national policy and requirements to achieve the growth we need within a high quality environment, but not at the expense of that environment.

The plan has carefully addressed the requirements of the framework regulation. In reviewing the current state of the environment, we have acknowledged the conclusions of the broadly based GREEN 2000 Advisory Group which reported to the Taoiseach earlier this year. We have clearly identified the kind of risks which increased economic activity poses for the environment through, for example, greater production of wastes, increased emissions to environmental media and depletion of natural emissions to environmental media and depletion of natural resources. I am satisfied that we have comprehensive insurances against these risks. At project level, the existing regulatory controls will be strengthened by the licensing functions of the Environmental Protection Agency in relation to specified activities of major polluting potential. There are also extensive public participation provisions in the planning and environmental impact assessment systems which give expression to the shared responsibility which is fundamental to environmental protection.

At a broader programme level, respect for the principle of sustainable development is fundamental to our approach. Both in Chapter 12, on the environmental situation, and in the sectoral development chapters of the plan, we have identified the environmental impacts of our strategy and of the particular operations included in the plan. We will achieve sustainable development, minimising the risks we have identified, by progressing environmental integration and by providing efficient environmental infrastructure to support increased economic activity. The plan demonstrates that the economic sectors have moved some way towards the internationalisation of environmental considerations. I will be agreeing an agenda with the Ministers concerned to make this a systematic part of economic decision-making.

The plan includes provision for £656 million to be invested directly in environmental services. This includes spending on sewerage, water supply, waste, coastal protection and environmental research, Many commentators and organisations, including the Central Bank, IBEC, the Irish Business Bureau and the Culliton and Moriarty reports have underlined the need for investment in infrastructure. The recognition given in the plan to environmental infrastructure is a welcome development. Although the services involved often lack a high profile and are largely unseen, they build capacity within the economy in several ways. They directly service development sectors, enable the environment safely to absorb additional development, protect the natural resource base for expansion in tourism, agriculture and food, and underpin the competitive advantage which a clean environment can create in these areas.

There will be a new operational programme to extend and develop the current programme for water, sanitary and other local services. Water and sanitary services will continue to be the major direct investment area, with a provision of £605 million over the period 1994-99. This investment will be supported by the Cohesion and Structural Funds, recognising the pivotal role of these services in both environmental and economic terms. I will be placing major emphasis on the sewage treatment requirements of the Environment Action Programme and Community law, so that pollution blackspots on inland waters can be eliminated and the outdated and undesirable practice of discharging large quantities of raw sewage into coastal waters and estuaries will end. An extensive programme of new projects is proceeding through design and planning stages at present and a phased programme of construction works will come on stream throughout the decade. Last week the European Commission approved initial support of £10 million from the Cohesion Fund for the early preconstruction stages of six major schemes including Ringsend and Howth sewage treatment and Cork main drainage. Several of the other areas where new or extended services are required have been identified in the plan. I will be reviewing priorities very regularly to ensure that the operational programme will be fully responsive to development and servicing needs throughout the decade.

Policy in relation to waste management has become the focus of increasing attention of Community level and rightly so. Community waste policy now involves a hierarchy of waste management options which lays primary emphasis on waste prevention, followed by promotion of recycling and re-use and then optimisation of final disposal methods for waste which is not reused. We are ordering our waste policies accordingly. A number of important initiatives are already in train, particularly with regard to prevention of waste through use of cleaner technologies and in relation to recycling. My Department is separately preparing comprehensive legislation to modernise and consolidate the law on waste and to provide an improved framework for waste planning, management and regulation. The final link in the chain will be the establishment of an adequate network of waste disposal installations. Provision is made in the National Plan to allow us to work progressively towards this objective, making appropriate provision for both hazardous and municipal waste disposal. I am particularly concerned that we do not jeopardise the opportunity to make adequate provision to meet the needs of industry regarding hazardous waste disposal. Before making any final decisions in this regard, I am anxious that there should be informed public discussion of all the relevant issues. My Department, in co-operation with Trinity College Dublin, will be sponsoring a national seminar in the near future with this in mind.

An element of the plan which offers exciting possibilities is the provision of £116 million for urban renewal. The programme contains an expanded range of measures and new initiatives designed to resuscitate social and economic life in core areas of our urban centres, the rehabilitation of the built environment, the restoration and conservation of urban architecture and heritage, and the completion of the Temple Bar cultural quarter.

Important steps have been taken over the last few years to tackle the problem of urban decline. The tax-based urban renewal scheme, which operates in selected areas of 24 cities and towns throughout the country, has achieved great success in promoting private sector development. Projects valued at over £1 billion, between projects completed, in progress and in planning, have now been prompted by the urban renewal scheme. The measures outlined in the national plan will build on the achievements of the present scheme. A series of urban improvement measures will be undertaken in various locations throughout the country and covering a range of environmental upgrading activities. These could include cultural, heritage and conservation projects, and projects aimed at bringing unused floor space back into everyday use.

The second part of the programme will cover Temple Bar where a range of cultural facilities is to be provided. The purpose is to create a new focal point for culture and tourism in Dublin, which will be of major significance in the regeneration of the Dublin City Centre area. The total cost of the urban renewal programme is £116 million — £82 million for the general urban improvement measures and £34 million for Temple Bar cultural quarter.

It is opportune that the National Development Plan should be launched at a time when we are about to embark on a major new institutional departure in Irish public administration with the establishment of eight regional authorities. These authorities will have an important contribution to make to national development by promoting coordination and co-operation among the various agencies responsible for the provision of public services including, of course, the local authorities. They will also be able to provide a regional focus and a regional voice where these are lacking at present.

The regional authorities' areas will be used for the purposes of the Structural and Cohesion Funds and the authorities will be responsible for monitoring and advising on the implementation at regional level of the operational programmes and making recommendations to the programme monitoring committees. The review function is, in effect, being put on a statutory footing. Its status and authority will be greatly enhanced by virtue of operating within the framework of statutory institutions with membership drawn from democratically elected public representatives, while at the same time having structures which provide for involvement of the relevant regional interests, including of course, the social partners.

In conclusion, the National Development Plan draws together a range of measures across the whole spectrum of economic and social activity to give this country the best long term returns in terms of increasing employment and growth, and improved competitiveness and living standards. It addresses the central economic and social issues which we face, and its impact will be apparent not only in the years up to 1999 but into the next century as well.

Mr. Yates

The Taoiseach in his opening contribution chided the Opposition for highlighting the inadequacies in relation to employment in this plan. He said we were speaking about tax reform because we could not see anything in the plan to criticise and he referred any debate about tax reform to the budget. He is missing the main point, contained in the first sentence of the plan, which states: "This National Development Plan is a plan for employment".

Fine Gael passionately believes that unless there is radical reform of PAYE, PRSI and levies which are a burden on employment we will not have any meaningful plan to create jobs. There are three distinct consequences of our present tax code. First, it adds to gross labour costs. Take, for example, the clothing industry and compare us to Northern Ireland. Our gross labour costs are higher than in Northern Ireland because of all the taxes added to net pay, yet the net pay of workers here is lower. Second, because payroll costs are higher, there is a direct incentive for employers to reduce numbers. During the past decade payroll costs have risen by 10 per cent because of the real increase in the tax burden. Third, many parents in low paid work would be better off on social welfare because the more children they have the more social welfare they receive, while there is no tax free allowance for children.

Unless the Government is prepared meaningfully to integrate pay and tax talks in any successor to the Programme for Economic and Social Progress and focus on net pay, we will continue to have high gross labour costs and an increased tax wedge, which was so rightly identified in Culliton as the biggest impediment to employment growth, and a bloated public sector pay bill because the focus will be on gross pay. Without radical tax reform of PAYE and PRSI, investment plans such as this will only improve the hardware of the economy but will not increase the number of people at work.

Unemployment is acknowledged as the most serious problem facing Irish society. This plan purports to be a plan for employment. I do not believe that our 25,000 school leavers each year for the period of the plan can depend on this plan for their future livelihood and standard of living. What is the hidden agenda of this plan? If you go through each of the figures what will you find? When you look at the gross job targets of 200,000, the net job targets and the growth in the labour force you find when you pull away all the myriad of facts that this Government is depending on very substantial emigration to prevent unemployment reaching 400,000 by the end of the decade. That is the prospect we are facing unless there is huge emigration. The hidden agenda of this plan is a reliance on emigration to solve unemployment.

This plan is from the same word-processor in the Department of Finance that produced previous plans, including the 1989-93 plan. The introduction to that plan claimed that gross job creation each year would be increased from 29,000 to 35,000. During a period of five years that amounts to 175,000 jobs. Yet in Appendix 1 of the National Development Plan 1994-1999 we find that in industry the number of permanent jobs that have been retained in the economy, arising out of the previous plan, was a mere 11,474. The figure of 175,000 jobs was a work of fiction.

Temporary training schemes and construction activity are only short term palliatives for unemployment and will only last as long as investment lasts. The key objective of this plan — and the ESRI were so right in this — must be to improve the productive capacity of the Irish economy permanently. There is no permanent evaluation system established by the Government to ascertain whether investment in this programme will give an adequate rate of return. Central to the ESRI recommendations was that we would have the establishment of a central project evaluation unit. Here we have a plan to spend £8 billion of EC money and £4 billion of Exchequer money, yet we have not agreed the monitoring and evaluating structures to see whether we get value for money. I cannot understand how the Government could defer the implementation of this key recommendation in the ESRI report.

Our simple objective must be to increase Ireland's percentage of world trade and to have an output per head of population equal to the European average. There is little evidence that this plan has any integrated focus for improving our competitiveness. There is not a sentence in the operational programmes in relation to telecommunications, the postal service, energy and transport costs that suggests how costs can be reduced, or how efficiency can be improved for the consumer and the business sector, which is depending on a reduction in those charges to improve their competitiveness on a cost basis. The key to competitiveness is cost structures. These include primarily labour costs as well as transport, telecommunications, energy and postal costs. There should have been an obligation on the semi-State companies, in return for these investments, to bring forward improvements in efficiency which would result in a reduction in charges.

There is little mention in the plan of access transport costs. After the Channel Tunnel comes into operation we will be the only island economy that has not a land link to the main European market, the Golden Triangle. Our peripherality will become more noticeable over the period of the plan. A strong case was made at EC level for investment of EC funds in mobile assets, particularly in shipping on the southern and central corridor. The Government has turned a deaf ear to this case and there is little mention of it in the plan. A critical test of the plan will be the reversal of the flow of ro-ro traffic from the most southerly parts of Munster across the country up to the Larne — Stranraer crossing and then down to London and other southerly parts of England. The loss of revenue to Dublin port as a result of this has been estimated to be in the region of £56 million a year. Yet we have no support for mobile assets or no strategy to reduce the traffic in this plan.

It is generally acknowledged that growth in employment will come by developing small businesses. The Secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach told the forum that one of the areas of underperformance in employment here, compared with other European countries, was small businesses. If we had a similar number of jobs in small businesses, we would have created an additional 20,000 jobs. The adage that large corporations tend to cut costs and small businesses create jobs is true. Fundamental to the growth of small businesses is managerial ability. In a small business one person is often responsible for marketing, production management, accounts, sales and so on. The Irish Management Institute has sought special funding to develop and widen its services to small industries. It is imperative that the Government supports its proposal and it has specifically asked for support for its £20 million programme to improve its basic facilities at Sandyford where trainers will be retrained.

Another important area of industrial expenditure, as identified by the ESRI, is in research and development. We have been consistently under-investing as a percentage of GDP in RSD and in new product development. We must refocus industrial incentives to rectify this imbalance, even if it involves greater selectivity. The Opposition's key criticism of this plan is the question of accessibility — access by the voluntary and community sectors, the bottom up approach. A key element of EC funding must be the harnessing of the initiative of the voluntary and community sectors at local level. In Northern Ireland a draft development plan was published last April and submissions were invited from all interested parties prior to the presentation to Brussels of the final plan. Our Government, with its smug centralised processing, decided to submit the plan before it was published and thus it was a fait accompli. The centralised planning in the Department of Finance has not been penetrated by any outside body. This has been an “Eithne cleansing” process of local community initiative. This can only stifle participation in future plans. The Government is content to leave it to the “Waldorf set” of programme managers.

Mr. E. Kenny

The penthouse suite.

Mr. Yates

The principle of subsidiarity, and the input of local councillors who have mulled over sub-regional programmes, has been undermined by the Government's attitude to the preparation of this plan with a minimum of transparency and accountability.

It is quite striking to note how EC funds have been used over the past decade. Let us compare current and capital spending over the decade 1982-92. In 1982 current Government expenditure stood at £4.53 billion but by 1992 this has arisen to £7.06 billion. Capital expenditure over the same period rose from £625 million in 1982 to £776 million in 1992. This shows that in spite of massive EC transfers of 3 per cent to 4 per cent of GNP, current spending rose twice as fast as capital spending. What has happened to all those EC billions? Effectively, we have not adhered to the principle of additionality and instead we have substituted EC finance for Exchequer commitments. Day-to-day spending, with no long term return has been given priority. The main consideration has been to get through on target to the next budget. In many ways the Government has treated EC funding as if it was national lottery loot — a windfall to shore up short term budgetary considerations instead of adhering to the objective of trying to raise our national income per person to the European average.

It is questionable what criteria were used to provide the funding for the Tallaght Hospital. The £113 million investment in this vital health facility should have gone ahead years ago as promised but it was deferred again and again. Many people in south-west Dublin have to depend on public transport to get to St. James's or other hospitals. There are more than 100,000 people living in the area and thus there is a vital need for such a hospital. It is, undoubtedly, a social rather than an economic necessity. It should have been funded out of the usual health public capital programme at national level. In certain aspects of this plan, the short term political priorities have over-ridden long term economic development.

The Government has been less than honest in its hyped presentation of the National Development Plan. It has made assumptions about the level of private sector investment, at £3.7 billion, to maximise the figures. There is no guarantee of such an investment. Let us be honest, the investment over the period of this plan is not £20 billion but £17.4 billion but to make things look better the 1993 figures were included to gross up the figure to £20 billion. The Government cooked the books.

The National Development Plan must be integrated with other financial policies in order to increase incomes and the number of jobs. The Government has not set out either an incomes or taxation policy. Subsidised jobs, whether in training schemes or on construction sites, will last only as long as the subsidy lasts. All the indications are that at the end of the period of the plan we will not get the same level of EC resources again. Our share of EC funding has dropped from over 13 per cent to 10 per cent. The indications are that the Community will be enlarged by the end of the millennium and new countries in central and eastern Europe will qualify under the present criteria for funding. In effect, this is our last chance to rectify the structural defects in the Irish economy. In terms of the rate of return the yardstick against which any project must be measured is that of world interest rates on lending. For example, if we had been allowed to use the money to reduce the national debt we could say that the return on the money is the interest we would have paid to service the debt, be it at 6 or 7 per cent. At least we would have had a fixed rate of return. Any investment we must make must be able to justify a rate of return that at least meets that threshold if not exceed it.

The ESRI and a group of consultants — DKM, professors from Maynooth and so on — were the only people to study in an independent and detailed manner the effectivness of past plans, but many of their recommendations were wilfully ignored. One of their recommendations was to establish a reserve fund of 20 per cent of total funds. They recommended that all the money should not be spent at the start of the six year period, but that following an evaluation of the pilot projects and based on the wisdom of experience a decision should be made on the best way to proceed. However, that was not the case. The Government wanted to generate the greatest possible hype to put the best possible gloss on it and, thus, did not establish a reserve fund of 20 per cent.

New information may become available about certain projects and we need that information to ensure prudence rather than political expediency. There is no provision for tendering or competition in the drawing down of funds between the various operational programmes or between subheads of overall programmes. Agriculture has seen its share of the funds diminish from 18 per cent to 13 per cent. While we acknowledge a ceiling has been put on its output, it must be stated that the concerns and needs of rural Ireland were never greater. Income maintenance through headage schemes has been frozen without any provision for an increase, nor is there any reference to the introduction of a third category of "extremely disadvantaged" areas for the most deprived regions.

The main area of expenditure comes under the general category of human resources. Many of our existing employment schemes have little or no training content. The unemployed are simply recycled without any prospect of a permanent job. Statistics show that early school leavers are the most likely candidates to become long term unemployed. The education system must target this most disadvantaged group. It is fundamental that the skill levels of existing employees are raised and all training schemes must have a minimum placement rate of between 33 per cent and 50 per cent in order to obtain repeat funding.

I welcome the allocation of funds to transport projects which will remove some of the remaining bottlenecks and improve our road capacity. The present environmental operational programmes are not adequately co-ordinated and the Government should rationalise the number of such programmes. In tourism, we need fewer projects selected to maximise the return nationally.

I welcome the reference to coastal protection schemes. Work at the beaches at Rosslare and Courtown should be funded by the Exchequer and not by the local authority. I welcome the provisions in regard to multiannual budgeting in Departments but there should be separate administratons for the spending and financing divisions in the Department of Finance.

I am concerned about the number of quangoes established at local level, such as enterprise boards, FÁS community initiatives, global grant development companies, Leader projects and Programme for Economic and Social Progress companies.

Mr. E. Kenny

Talking shops.

Mr. Yates

Such organisations should be streamlined, we do not need any more red tape at local level. We should allocate 5 per cent or 10 per cent of the money to local initiatives and allow the best projects compete for the rest of the money. The plan does not refer to an exchange rate policy or a competition policy which are badly needed while sterling is depreciating.

The 1989-93 plan spent £11.7 billion, yet unemployment increased by 63,000 and emigration by 98,000. Pouring billions of pounds into our economy will not achieve lasting employment growth unless we reform the impediments to job maintenance. Many labour intensive sectors, such as the clothing industry, are extremely price sensitive. The employer's PRSI rate here is 12.2 per cent as against 6.6 per cent in Northern Ireland. We should realise that they are our most significant competitors both in regard to imports and exports, particularly for the indigenous manufacturing sector. If the Government is not prepared to address this issue, as evidenced by its reluctance to deal with the 1 per cent income levy, it is little surprise that it is projecting job losses during the period of the plan at 140,000.

Minister for Social Welfare (Dr. Woods)

This national plan is a blueprint for a concerted drive for jobs and economic development during the next six years. Tht drive must involve all of us, the Government, the social partners, statutory agencies, the private sector, the trade unions — as part of the social partnership — and local communities. The plan is essentially a financial framework for infrastructure and human resource development for the next six years. It will only work if the energy, initiatives and skills of all the agencies and people involved are harnessed to put it into action. It is particularly important that we harness the energies and talents of those living in disadvantaged communities and give them the resources they require to tackle their local development needs. This plan will assist a substantial number of local development initiatives.

During the next six years £20 billion will be invested in people in Ireland. This major programme, the largest in our history, will target the huge potential for growth and job creation in the economy. For example, industry will receive £1.4 billion to promote indigenous small scale enterprise — the type identified by Culliton and Moriarty — to develop key sectors such as the film industry and electronic services and to market our attractiveness for overseas investment.

The plan involves also a £3 billion allocation to help make our agriculture, fisheries, forestry and food industries more competitive, maintain jobs and create new opportunties. I welcome particularly the Government's commitment to the development of our ports and fishing industry, particularly our inland fishery sector. Such investments will change the face of Ireland for the future. In other countries ports, inland fishery developments and so on have received an enormous capital input over many years. We do not have such a long history of capital, but this plan presents us with an opportunity to build up the type of infrastructure which is essential for development, competitive and effective marketing, business exchange and the export and import of raw materials.

The investment of £600 million in international marketing, specialisation in our tourist industry, the arts and culture and heritage projects will speed up the creation of new jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities in those areas. Our tourist industry has enormous potential, a great deal of which is as yet undeveloped. Unless we develop the infrastructure that goes with tourism, we limit the capacity of those who want to develop our tourism industry and create vital jobs. Under this plan the inland fisheries sector, for the first time, will receive substantial continuous investment during the next six years. By investing in such natural resources we will create opportunities in one of the most popular areas of tourism worldwide.

The plan provides also for major improvements to our transport infrastructure. The public transport area will receive approximately £2.6 billion. The sum of £3 billion is allocated for education and training so that our workforce will be better equipped to compete in world markets.

The local development plan is a new concept. A variety of development and expansion programmes and plans has been introduced since 1958. Apart from the massive injection of money in this plan, which is unprecedented, one of the new features is the local development programme which has resulted from consultation with and involvement of local communities throughout the country. It provides a £1.2 billion local development programme which will build on the community development programme and Programme for Economic and Social Progress initiatives which have been introduced since 1990. I introduced the first of the community development programmes in local disadvantaged areas under the social welfare umbrella in 1990. Subsequently the Programme for Economic and Social Progress area-based response was directed at areas of particular disadvantage, targeted at the long term unemployed and centred on 12 areas throughout the country. A higher level of resources were invested in those areas. The new plan builds on these two programmes and on the experience of people in local communities. People have been consulted, involved and organised to deliver at local level and that is one of the changes under this plan. There is great potential for the creation of local jobs which in turn will have a beneficial influence on those communities. I am hopeful this will result from the investment of £1.2 billion during the next six years under the local development programme.

The community development programme and the Programme for Economic and Social Progress have been so successful that the model they employ has been replicated by the Government in the National Development Plan's local development programme. This approach involves local community groups becoming prime movers in their own devlopment and coming together in partnership with local statutory agencies and the social partners to assess the needs and opportunities in their area and to draw up an action plan to provide social and economic development locally. The impetus can come from local communities and resources will be targeted at people in need in those communities. Building up local communities to participate in development initiatives and to benefit from improvement in the economy is a key strategy under this plan. The community development approach has proven its worth during the past four years since it was adopted in 1990.

The local development programme and local enterprise will provide a major boost to community development work on a wider scale in areas with high unemployment. It has four distinct elements to equip local communities with the resources and opportunities they need to come together and tackle the problems they face. The county enterprise partnership boards, of which there are 36, are set to create 3,500 jobs during the period of the plan and £114 million is being allocated for this purpose. A cash injection of £100 million during the six year period in a new area-based programme, on the lines of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress partnerships and covering some 30 areas instead of 12 areas as at present, is expected to create 18,000 jobs. Specific funding is earmarked for community development and capacity building initiatives. The expanded Community Employment Enterprise Development Programme, CEDP, will provide 30,000 places — a doubling of the present number of places by the end of the period of the plan with £813 million being allocated. A special urban renewal programme of £116 million for inner cities will provide approximately 3,000 direct work jobs per year. Private sector investment of £120 million brings the total commitment to local development during the period of the plan to £1,263 million. The partnership Government is committed to ensuring that the needs of people in disadvantaged communities are given special priority.

The plan is all about jobs and meeting the aspirations of people. More than 200,000 new jobs will come from this plan during the next six years and that is a reasonably conservative target. However, even this mammoth investment and jobs package is not enough. We must be pro-active and work supportive if we are to include in our plan those who are currently unemployed and young school leavers who face the dole for the first time. I have introduced a range of new initiatives during the past few years to help and encourage people to get back to work and participate in second chance education. Many people on the live register never had the opportunity to progress through the education system. The second and third level education courses provide them with this opportunity. People who pursue those courses are allowed retain their unemployment payments for the duration of the course and, therefore, will not lose out financially. In July the Government approved an increase in places under the third level allowance scheme to 500 unemployed people. A few years ago 100 people applied for second chance education courses and the number has now increased to 330. This year there are 500 third level places open to the unemployed. This increase in third level places provides encouragement to people who are long term unemployed and probably accounts for the increase in the numbers coming forward to take up those places. Those who see their colleagues achieving new standards and an increased stature through third level education see its benefits and that it will better equip them to compete for the available jobs.

The vocational training opportunities scheme, VTOS, is geared towards people who have been out of school for a few years and it has been particularly successful. The number of places available on this scheme has been extended to 3,000 from the start of the current academic year, an increase of 1,000 places since last year. The demand for places on the scheme continues to increase and has already outstripped the number of places available, even taking into account the additional 1,000 places provided this year. Where vocational education committees can provide places on vocational training organisation schemes or similar schemes in response to the demand from unemployed people, we will provide participants with their full unemployment payment and their extra benefits and people need have no fear in that regard.

If the vocational education committees can handle extra numbers, and some have said they can, we will provide long term unemployed people with their full payments and extra benefits so that they can participate if they wish. This measure will extend the second chance education opportunity to another 1,000 people this year, bringing the total number of participants up to 4,000. The numbers show that there is a new impetus in second chance education. I am told that we can thank the media for much of that because second chance education got a good deal of media coverage this year and people are much more aware of it and are coming forward in greater numbers to take part in the scheme.

The Government recently approved a new pilot scheme to encourage employment growth in indigenous industries. The back to work allowance will provide a financial cushion to unemployed people for up to 24 months while they are exploring employment opportunities in indigenous industries or setting up in business on their own. Long-term unemployed people can get three quarters of their unemployment assistance for 12 months and half the payments for a further 12 months. This scheme will encourage growth in the sectors identified in the Culliton report as having potential for expansion as well as providing opportunities for unemployed people. Close to 800 job opportunities have emerged since I launched the scheme ten days ago and that gives some idea of the interest in this scheme.

The Government also approved my proposal for a jobs facilitator in each of the main offices of my Department. This will greatly enhance our efforts to provide opportunities for unemployed people. The programme is in keeping with our policy of providing a comprehensive local service which addresses the needs and expectations of our customers. Our purpose is to facilitate the linkage with FÁS and other schemes and with semi-State bodies, to help lone parents and others and to be pro-active in helping them to get back into the workforce.

Our PRSI exemption scheme has been taken up by 3,000 people at this stage and Deputies will be aware that the Government has approved a new valuable option for school leavers to ensure that school leavers who would otherwise go on the dole will have other options. Currently I am discussing with the Minister for Enterprise and Employment the inclusion of a special training module for participants in this scheme or a training pathway for those who want to participate in the scheme.

Deputies asked about the new code of practice for people who have difficulties with ESB or gas bills. The code of practice is available from 12 o'clock today. I thank the representatives of the health boards who participated with officials of my Department in developing the new code of practice which will help to overcome some of the difficulties experienced in relation to the exceptional needs payments.

This is a good plan which represents a major commitment by the Government, the EC and the private sector. It is a vote of confidence in our future, in our ability to manage our economy well, to exploit effectively the full potential of the indigenous sector, to develop our infrastructure so that costs will be more competitive, to include every person and to make sure that every citizen participates in the benefits that will come from this huge investment. This plan will work and I urge the House to support it.

Mr. Dukes

I intend to limit my remarks to the parts of the plan which deal with agriculture, the food industry and forestry, although having listened to a dose of the obligatory rhetoric from the Minister, I should point out that some of the rhetoric in the statements in this plan and in the statements made about it are very revealing. The Taoiseach in his speech at the launch of the plan last Monday used many of the obligatory buzz words and the type of rhetoric just used by the Minister.

The Taoiseach talked about parts of the plan which would help us "build on the optimism and drive of rural communities". In what world is the Government living? I spend a great deal of my time in rural communities talking to farmers and others and I am damned if I can find any optimism these days. Sometimes I think that Ministers inhabit a world described in jargon and buzz words which are invented by the programme managers with whom they surround themselves, that they are so busy being flexible and adaptable in the House and nattering to each other that they have no time to see what is happening in the real world. They produce these dreadful concatenations of jargon that describe a world which does not exist. If one asked a person in any farming community today to describe his drive and optimism, he would look at one as if one had two heads. They do not have any great deal of optimism, for perfectly good reasons to do with the background to this plan.

Another thing about this plan which is rather irritating, especially in the context of the nonsensical and spurious kind of debate we are having today, where we are not even passing a resolution about it, is that if one tries to compare it with its predecessor, that bit of purple prose, the National Development Plan, 1989-93, and tries to follow through the various areas of expenditure and investment, one finds that the presentation of the tables as between the two plans is subtly different. It is not possible to compare one exactly with the other, not just because the figures in the first plan were on a constant 1989 prices basis and the figures in the second plan are on a constant 1993 prices basis. The organisation of the tables is a bit different and it would take a substantial amount of work — which is not the kind of work one is tempted to do for a 20 minute participation in a spurious debate like this — to try to track Government action through these two programmes. From what I have read in the papers it seems that the presentation of this plan has been heavily influenced by these programme mangers, these flexible adaptable people who flex and adapt language to describe a world to the Ministers which just is not there.

The Government failed to answer one very important question in the discussion which we finally forced on them some months ago about the ESRI report on the outcome of the 1989-93 plan. The question related to how much private investment came forward during the period of that plan. It is difficult to compare the tables but if one does so one will find that in the 1989-93 plan the Government said we would have £4.1 billion of EC Structural Funds, £3.8 billion of domestic capital investment and £2.1 billion of private investment over the period of the plan. These figures are in constant 1989 prices.

The Government claims that under this plan which covers 1993, although this is not included in the title, the European Community will invest £8 billion while £8.5 billion will be forthcoming in State investment and £3.7 billion in private investment. On the surface this looks fine but the Government has never told us if the projected level of private investment was made available during the period of the last plan between 1989-93 in any sector, including the food industry, farming, indigenous industry, multinational industry and under local community initiatives. If not, has the Government any idea why not? Has the Government a clue as to whether the special savings schemes introduced during the past few years have pre-empted the use of private capital for these constructive purposes to create employment? I suspect that the projected level of private capital was not made available during that period for the projects set out in the plan and unless the Government changes substantially the way it goes about encouraging people to invest here I do not think that £3.7 billion, at constant 1993 prices, will be forthcoming.

The basis on which we had to prepare our thinking on this plan was incomplete. In the debate earlier this year in this House we received an incomplete summary of the ESRI's assessment of the previous plan. If that is all the Government was working on in the preparation of this plan it is no wonder it is flawed. We need a real examination of this plan, much more than this spurious and cosmetic debate to which there will be no outcome and for which there is no resolution.

I would like to outline the background to the plans that have been put forward for the development of agriculture. Incidentally, this report contains no chapter on agriculture; it contains a chapter on natural resources which is a nicer and more politically correct title. We have to dig to find out what this will mean for farmers. The chapter contains little of substance. The items that will have most effect on farmers during the period of the plan, and which are not mentioned to any extent in it, are CAP reform and the GATT negotiations.

On the question of CAP reform, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, who is present, has been a participant, an accomplice or a co-accused in this nonsensical business. He was led by the then Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Ray MacSharry whose sins in this regard are legion and who has created an enormous problem for us in regard to GATT to which I will refer later.

There are restrictions on the production of almost every major farm product: there are quotas and restrictions on milk production; there are restrictions on the eligibility of herds for the multiplicity of premia in the beef sector; there are quotas for sheep; there is a national reserve of quotas and a set-aside scheme for tillage. As things stand, there is almost nothing that one can do on an Irish farm without first seeking permission from an official. One almost has to ask what one is entitled to have for breakfast and if it will be necesary to put that on computer in the Department. That is the background to this plan in regard to the development of farming, if it makes any sense to talk about development in the context of it.

We have scheme after scheme and premium after premium. We are getting to the point where we will have so many schemes that, as I said in the House a few days ago, we will need a guide to decide which schemes any farmer should apply for, when they should apply and what the conditions are. Last Tuesday the IFA held a day of action when its members came to this House to highlight their difficulties. The stories they told us were horrific but they were all true. Indeed, some were understated. The many schemes available account for such a major proportion of disposable income on farms that any glitch or hitch in the operation of a scheme would have major implications for farm families and the way they run their farms.

At times there are substantial delays in making payments under these schemes. As a result farmers suffer. The farming community is now more vulnerable than ever before in regard to the performance of the administration. The Minister knows that there are delays in the Department in the administration of the schemes and in making payments. In some cases the Department has created difficulties and caused confusion. I will give one example. The Department decided for some reason this year to abolish the herd numbers of those who had applied for a ewe premium only during the past three years and to allocate a new flock number but it told no one. Because of the delays in making payments of ewe premium farmers who contacted the Department were told that it had no record of their claims as they were not on its books. What they did not realise was that the herd number had been abolished and replaced with a flock number. For some time many people around the country were under the impression, which was perfectly understandable, that someone in Agriculture House had literally wiped them off the map.

It is because these premium schemes, as a result of the restrictions, have become so important that the rural community has been rendered more vulnerable, politically. We became aware of the dangers in this in some of the preparatory discussions on this plan. There was a time — it took much effort by many people to prod the Minister into doing something about this — when there was a serious threat that the yahoos in the Labour Party, who would not know a rural problem if it jumped up and bit them, would say that we could save money by not paying headage payment to farmers.

Mr. Broughan

We have many rural Deputies now.

Mr. Dukes

The Deputy should keep his peace; I can promise him that I will not interrupt him. If he keeps his peace he might hear something to his advantage which would be of help in curbing the excesses of these nincompoops in Government. The more important those schemes become the more vulnerable that section of our society will become to the kind of nonsense that was about to be prepetrated by the Minister of State, Dame Eithne Fitzgerald and her co-yahoos.

Mr. Broughan

Why does the Deputy not refer to income subsidies?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Dukes should be allowed to continue without interruption.

Mr. Dukes

The other matter that has to be referred to is the Blair House agreement that was signed in November last. Even the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry admits, finally, that the provisions of the Blair House agreement go far beyond the provisions that he thought were agreed to in the CAP reform negotiations. I should remind the House that on the night that agreement was signed the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry, Deputy Walsh, said that in his view it was a good agreement. It was not until April this year, after much hassle, many complaints and analysis by this side of the House, that the Taoiseach finally decided that he should try to put together a strategic alliance with the French. When I pointed to the dangers I was accused by one of the other luminaries on the Labour Party benches, Deputy Kemmy, of trying to wreck a world trade agreement. When the Taoiseach returned and announced that he had formed a grand alliance with the French, belatedly, the same Deputy Kemmy was the first out out of the traps to congratulate the Taoiseach on doing what I wanted him to do but that was considered to be gross subversion when first proposed by me. No wonder the agricultural community are scared witless of what these crypto-socialists will do in Government.

Mr. Broughan

The Deputy should talk to his colleague, Mr. Sutherland.

Mr. Dukes

The Minister is doing the same kind of job in the same kind of terms as the Deputy's former colleague, Brendan Halligan, is doing in Bord na Móna, ruining rural communities all over the country. The Deputy should go and talk to him and when he has done that I will accept his advice as to whom else I should talk. He had better find out, because the rural communities around this country have rumbled his party and they know that it is the greatest danger to rural communities that has ever been visited upon us. It is even more dangerous because it is headed up by a Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry who took months to realise the dangers of this GATT agreement.

What GATT provides for is a reduction over six years in EC internal supports of 20 per cent with an argument still going out about the green box, export subsidy cuts of 36 per cent over the same year, cuts of 21 per cent over the same period in the volume of products to which those supports will apply, the tariffication of import levies and a reduction by 36 per cent over five years, and a minimum guarantee of access to 3 per cent of the Community market in the first year of the agreement and 5 per cent in the final years to the Cairns group of countries in particular.

This looks very fine when looked at from the detached point of view of some of the commentators on world trade who forget, of course, that the last thing the United States really believes in is free trade, as witnessed by the fact that every time they have an argument they produce this hit list of products, the first item on the hit list being Bailey's Irish Cream if it is the hapless Minister, Deputy Joe Walsh, they are talking to, or French wine, if they are talking to the French Minister. The effect of all of those changes will be severe on the European Community. It will be even more severe on Ireland and our farming community because we are far more dependent on agricultural exports than any other country in the Community and than the European Community is on average.

What are we going to see? We will see a very substantial squeeze over and above the restrictions being imposed on our beef production by the CAP reforms. We have already seen the effects of the intervention weight limit agreed to by this Minister and only belatedly objected to by him. We have already seen the effect of a sudden tightening up of grading standards for beef. There is more of that to come, and that is the background to the platitudes about agriculture in this plan. We face the almost certain prospect of a further 2 per cent cut in the milk quota with all that will do for dairy producers and the particular pain it will cause to smaller dairy producers. We face the prospect of a sugar beet quota cut of around 3 per cent, a major change in what is the mainstay of the farming economy over large parts of the midlands, and we will see the certainty of a higher set aside for cereals. Last year we had a 15 per cent set aside; this year we will have a 20 per cent set aside. There is nothing about that in this plan because it does not fit in with the nice rosy picture that the programme managers like to produce. Instead we have all this claptrap about investment and competitiveness and human resources and all the rest which means nothing because it takes no account of the background I have been talking about.

On page 55 of this plan I find one of these eloquent examples of the nonsense that is talked. We have a description of this strategy.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Dukes, your time is exhausted. I ask you to conclude.

Mr. Dukes

I am dreadfully sorry to hear it because there is much more that we can say. I find in this plan glowing references to the early retirement scheme for farmers and the installation aid scheme for young farmers. Both of those schemes have turned out to be a fiasco. We do not have an early retirement scheme yet in operation; we will be lucky if it is in operation next year. We have an installation aid scheme for young farmers which is supposed to have been in force for the last five years. I spoke to one applicant the other day who finally got approval this year having applied for the scheme four years ago.

Environmental concerns for farmers are set out in this plan. The first scheme brought in for the control of farmyard pollution was stopped before it had made any real dent in the problem because the Government ran out of money and did not want to reallocate from anywhere else. There is a whole rake of nonsense in this plan about alternative farm enterprises, as if every farmer could go into deer production, rabbit production, snail production etc. Undoubtedly some people will, but it will not take up the slack created by all the restrictions of the CAP reforms and the GATT.

There is talk about human resources in the advisory sector. This is from a Government which together with its predecessor has strangled our farm advisory and research service ever since the current body was set up, a Government that allowed a situation to develop in Teagasc where a colleague of mine, Deputy Seymour Crawford had to fight might and main to get an adviser kept on in his own constituency of Cavan-Monaghan. We heard only yesterday that the Inisowen Peninsula in Donegal is, wonder of wonders, to continue to have an agricultural adviser. Do the people who wrote this plan ever look at what is happening on the ground? Have they any idea of how difficult it is for the ordinary Teagasc advisers, not to speak of researchers, to carry out their job today when they are hounded at every turn by restriction on their budget? They find that people who are supposed to be employed permanently on this job are being let go because Teagasc found out suddenly that it had 100 people working on contract that it did not know it had.

On the food industry I am glad that we got the whole process of An Bord Bia and that plan for the food industry set up before the programme managers got at this. I congratulated the Minister on this some months ago. We have there a programme which was put together by rather sensible people, an over ambitious programme, but one that has the groundwork for some sense in it, far more sensible than the nonsense in this plan.

On the forestry side we have the usual hype about what forestry can do for this country in a situation where Coillte is acting as if it were an independent republic, answerable to nobody, with the most aggressive land acquisition programme there has ever been and which seems to take no responsibility whatever for the development of an indigenous timber industry.

The plan, Sir, when we discuss its successor, will turn out to have been just as dubious as the last one and I will bet my bottom dollar that at the end of it the Government will be just as unable to quantify the results of this plan in terms of investment as it is today about the 1989-93 plan.

Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry (Mr. J. Walsh)

I very much welcome the opportunity to address the Dáil on the issue of EC Structural Funds and the National Development Plan, launched earlier this week. In so far as mainstream agriculture is concerned, supports coming through the guarantee side of FEOGA continue to be the principal source of EC financial backing and over the past 20 years some 92 per cent of EC funding has come from the guarantee fund, with 8 per cent, or close to £1 billion, being provided from the Structural Fund side.

However, Ireland's agriculture has reaped very substantial benefit from the Structural Funds. The funds have made a very significant contribution to on-farm structural improvement over several years, first, under the farm modernisation scheme and in more recent times under the farm improvement programme. Agriculture and our rural areas have also benefited under the specific measures introduced in the current round to address such needs as farm pollution control and rural development requirements. Indeed, this innovation which encouraged member states to draw up custom built programmes to address their particular priorities has to be seen as a most welcome development in the current round of the funds and one which serves to give substance to talk of subsidiarity.

On the food side, very considerable resources have been directed at the development of a modern and efficient food processing sector. Some resources — but not nearly enough — have been allocated over the years to product and process research and development. Training and education have also been the focus of Structural Funding for the benefit particularly of new entrants to farming. Farmers in the disadvantaged areas, which now cover 72 per cent of the country, have been supported by way of compensatory headage payments under a directive introduced in 1975. Considerable advances have been made in the forestry sector with support from the Structural Funds.

Very clearly the Structural Funds — principally FEOGA guidance, but also the social and regional development funds — have played an important part in developing all segments of agriculture and rural life. They have done this in an era when production expansion was being promoted; they have accommodated themselves to the changing situation of prudent price policies and production limitation. In the future Structural Funds have to play their role against further changes by way of CAP reform and ultimately a GATT deal.

It is against the background of CAP reform and GATT that we have to consider how to make optimum use of the Structural Funds to be made available for agriculture, food, forestry and rural development over the next six years. As the House is aware, a total of £1,505 million of public moneys will be spent on these four areas over the 1994-99 period. This figure compares with the £846 million allocated to these areas in 1989 and represents close to 19 per cent of EC Structural Funds to be allocated to Ireland over the next six years.

Total spending, including the private financial element, in these sectors under the plan will, over the six year period, exceed £2 billion. When account is taken of the expected agri-environment scheme, the farm retirement scheme and Leader programme, all of which are additional to the Structural Fund related expenditure in the National Development Plan, the spend over the period will be approximately £3 billion. This level of funding is substantial by any standards and should provide a very favourable climate for farmers, rural dwellers in general and the food and forestry sectors to develop their potential over the coming years.

At this stage it would be useful to set out my general objectives for the whole agriculture, food, rural development and forestry areas in the period covered by the National Development Plan. The first is to secure an efficient and competitive agriculture, food and forestry sector against the background of CAP reform and a GATT deal. The second is to capitalise on our image as a producer of high quality and environmentally friendly food products and the third is to secure a vibrant rural society by maintaining the maximum number of viable farm households and by developing the wider rural economy.

Achievement of these objectives will require substantial investment in the following seven specific areas: agricultural structures, food industry, environment, farm diversification-rural development, income support in the less favoured areas, production and processing aspects of the forstry sector and research, training and advisory supports for all of the investment measures which I have highlighted.

Considerable progress has been achieved in the agricultural structures area in the present round of Structural Funds. Particularly successful has been the operational programme for the control of farmyard pollution. Under this measure, investment of more than £200 million has been carried out by farmers on the provision of waste storage, winter housing for cattle and sheep and fodder storage. An independent evaluation of the programme found it had been successful in achieving its main objective of significantly reducing farmyard pollution on participating farms. The evaluation also acknowledged the significant contribution the programme had made to the improvement of the environment and to the preservation of Ireland's image as a quality food producer. It was emphasised at the same time, however, that substantial numbers of farmers still had not carried out the necessary pollution control work and it was suggested that the reasons for non-participation were mainly financial. With this in mind I intend to continue with this programme in the 1994-99 period and I would emphasise once again the importance we in agriculture attach to achieving high environmental standards. My aim will also be to target those farmers who need to carry out investment in this area but who can least afford to bear the high costs involved.

Other aspects which I will be highlighting in the agricultural structures area in the new round include the provision of support measures to enable farmers comply with the new dairy hygiene and animal welfare standards. Here again, we would hope to target the smaller producer who can least afford to pay for this investment. I am also proposing to continue to implement the EC producer groups scheme and to support improved cattle breeding, horse marketing and promotion and organic production.

The early retirement scheme for farmers which I expect to be in place by the end of the year will of course also have a significant impact in the agriculture structures area. This measure is being financed from the guarantee side of FEOGA. I hope to be able to announce the details of this scheme in the coming weeks.

I do not propose to go into the details of the type of programme we have drawn up except to say that the scheme will be open to farmers between 55 and 66 years of age who retire from farming for good. Provided they fulfil certain specified conditions, they will receive a generous annual pension which we have pitched at a maximum level of approximately £9,000. The introduction of this scheme, together with the continuation of the scheme of installation aid for young farmers, should have a considerable impact on the structure of Irish farming, releasing land to young full-time dynamic and well trained farmers. On-farm investment is a vital component in efforts by farmers to remain competitive producers and to improve the quality of their output in an increasingly market oriented environment but, of course, such investment must be carried through also into the processing sector.

I will now deal with the food industry which is the responsibility of my Minister of State, Deputy O'Shea, who is doing an excellent job. There is no need for me to emphasise the vital part the agriculture and food areas play in our economy, accounting as they do for approximately 10 per cent of GDP and some 17 per cent of employment. The low import content of agri-food exports means that as much as 40 per cent of Ireland's net foreign exchange earnings come from this sector. The report of the Review Group on the Food Industry highlighted the need for special attention in this area if we are to maximise the benefits of the resources available and stressed the need for significant additional resources, mainly from Structural Funds and from the industry. I regard this report as a milestone in the development of this country's food industry and my expectations are that it will mark the beginning of a phase of accelerated growth of competitiveness and overall success in the sector. The expert group report has set specific growth targets for basic foodstuffs, food ingredients, prepared consumer food and employment.

The report also emphasised the need for an integrated approach to this industry in the whole area of capital investment, R&D at both institutional and in-company level, market development and promotion and human resources. Two important developments have taken place since that report was published in April last — the Government has broadly accepted the terms of the report and substantial Structural Funds have now been allocated to this area. We will be following the expert group's approach in the sub-programme my Department is drawing up for the food industry and the Government has committed total public funding of £305 million to this area in the 1994-99 period. That funding will be matched by aproximately £350 million from the priviate sector bringing the total investment proposed to the very considerable sum of approximately £655 million. As well as the need to remain competitive both at the production and processing level, one of our objectives is to capitalise on our image as a producer of high quality and environmentally friendly food products.

With regard to the environment, I have indicated my intention to continue to help farmers with investment aid for pollution control. I will, of course, also be implementing the agri-environment programme which is part of the CAP reform measures and which builds on the pilot environmentally sensitive areas scheme which I introduced last year. This scheme which was formulated in consultation with a wide range of environmentalists, farming and community interests will blend modern agriculture with a practical level of environmental protection. The proposals which are awaiting clearance from the EC Commission provide for a rural environment protection scheme which aims in particular to establish farm practices and controlled production methods which reflect the increasing public concern for conservation, landscape protection and wider environmental problems.

The proposals also offer increased incentives to farmers who undertake more stringent environmentally friendly farming practices focusing particularly on problem areas as regards overgrazing and water quality.

While agriculture will continue to play a central role in the rural economy in Ireland for the forseeable future, the full exploitation of rural potential will be dependent on the degree to which we succeed in integrating agriculture into wider rural development.

Under the current operational programme for rural development we have begun the process of encouraging the development of farm diversification and other off-farm activities for farmers and rural dwellers in general with a view to increasing the income levels of those who live in these isolated areas. The measures to which I refer include livestock enterprises such as sport horses, deer, goats, also horticulture enterprises, agri-tourism and farm relief services.

Even more significant rural development initiatives have been taking place under the current Leader programme. It has captured the imagination of people living in rural areas and they feel they now have some say in the way their local communities wish to develop. Those of us at central level recognise that genuine local and community development will only occur at the instigation of local people and local communities backed up where necessary by the support of official agencies.

Leader is in general proving very successful and to date it is estimated that over 500 full-time job equivalents have been created and a further 1,700 are targeted over the remainder of the programme.

My aim will be to further develop the various actions I have outlined in the new round but the final shape of our programme of work in this area, including the overall financial allocation, cannot be settled until the Commission brings forward definitive proposals on a new Leader initiative.

The Leader model, based on the involvement of local rural communities in charting their own development, is a key element in the whole rural development process. For that reason I have made no secret of my desire to see Leader II coming into place, this time covering the whole country and with increased funding.

Turning to the question of income support, it must be acknowledged that there are many small farmers who would never be able to survive on the income generated by their land, especially in the less favoured areas of the country. It is for this reason that the European Community has been prepared to compensate farmers who live in such areas by compensatory headage payments. Such aid enables farmers to remain in areas which would otherwise become even more depopulated, leading to long term economic, social and environmental problems. In the new round, therefore, we will be allocating substantially increased funds to this area compared to the current round. The allocation provided for headage will permit any funding needs arising from the outcome of the appeals panel to be fully met.

In regard to forestry, my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Hyland, has operational responsibility for this area and is doing an excellent job in that regard. The forestry operational programme and associated forestry measures in the operational programme for rural development and the INTERREG programme have made a major contribution to rural development since 1989.

The targets set for these forestry programmes are being achieved and in some cases exceeded. The success of the programmes has been demonstrated recently by the decision of Louisiana Pacific to establish a £40 million OSB mill in Waterford providing up to 500 jobs and the announcement by Medite in Clonmel of a £21 million expansion of their operation which will provide an additional 180 jobs.

The forestry sector will be supported over the next six years both from the Structural Funds and FEOGA Guarantee. The Structural Funds will provide measures to underpin the Government's commitment to achieving a national planting target of 30,000 hectares per annum. It will also continue to build upon the success of the current forestry programmes by utilising available and suitable land, human and financial resources to the best advantage in continuing to promote the establishment of an expanded primary sector and the development of an efficient downstream processing sector. Funding for the processing sector will be provided through the industry programme.

I am proposing that grant aid towards the afforestation of land and premium payments will be increased as part of the CAP reform accompanying measures which will in future be met from FEOGA Guarantee. In relation to annual premium payments, I believe that farmers will welcome the proposed increases as well as the removal of the off-farm income limit.

Last, but certainly not least in my priorities is the need for support for research, training and advisory services for farmers in rural communities. Support measures in these three areas are essential if the investment already outlined is to achieve its objectives of an effective and internationally competitive agriculture, food and forestry sector. The Structural Funds to be made available will target specific aspects of these support measures. While Teagasc will play a large part in activities in these areas, there will be considerable emphasis also on basic and institutional research.

On a more general level I would point out that much of the investment to be undertaken under other programmes, including industry, tourism, infrastructural and the environment, will also impact significantly on rural areas and, therefore, the National Development Plan as a whole needs to be considered when assessing the overall benefits for farmers and other rural dwellers.

A central objective of the Government in the context of the National Development Plan is to increase and maintain employment. The various measures which I propose to put in place in agriculture, food, rural development and forestry have this objective very much in mind while at the same time being focused on achieving the highest levels of efficiency, quality, market orientation and competitiveness.

The employment potential of investment in these areas has been quantified in the National Development Plan. It will maintain the maximum number of viable farm households; create 1,500 to 2,000 new jobs per year in the food sector in the later years of the investment programme and maintain existing employment levels in the earlier years; create 1,000 part-time and 1,500 full-time jobs in farm diversification; create 1,600 jobs in the forestry sector when account is taken also of new guarantee funding in the same period and create substantial numbers of short term jobs in the construction industry through the capital investment schemes.

In all I have outlined a comprehensive and integrated set of measures for the agriculture, food, rural development and forestry areas for the 1994-99 period. I have already mentioned the type of food programme I have in mind and it will slot into the Government's main programme for industrial development but remain under the control of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. All the other areas will be incorporated into one operational programme for agriculture, rural development and forestry. This will enable careful monitoring and evaluation to take place over the six years and will allow us more flexibility than previously to move funds around where surpluses or gaps are identified.

Discussions have already taken place over the last 12 months with the various interests involved at central, regional and local level and I look forward to further discussions before we finalise our detailed programmes for submission to and approval by the EC.

Mr. Sargent

Ar dtús ba mhaith liom a rá go dteastaíonn uaim mo chuid ama a roinnt leis an Teachta Tom Foxe. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl don Aire agus don Aire Stáit as cóip saorin-aisce den phlean a chur chugam agus ceann níos lú a bheith ina theannta. Tá sé an-suimiúil a léamh.

I sympathise with the unfortunate people who felt they had to buy the booklet. The larger version costs £9 while the smaller one retails at £3. I have particular sympathy for unemployed people who may have made a small sacrifice to buy this booklet in the hope that its contents would provide some light at the end of the bleak tunnel in which they are currently trapped.

I was disappointed in the thrust of the plan. The old maxim is still in vogue and trips off the tongue of Minister after Minister, namely, that investment creates growth which creates jobs. That maxim is hardly every questioned because it is referred to so often. It ought be questioned because it has been shown ever more frequently to be inadequate, to fail and, most important of all, to exclude many other areas of development and potential because it seems to be the catch-all maxim for progress. There is a preoccupation with this formula and radical questions and decisions are neglected because of it. For example, there has been no attempt to define what work is, what a job is or what is the meaning of "sustainable", a word frequently used in a very loose fashion.

The Taoiseach claims that 200,000 jobs are on offer down the road on the strength of implementation of this plan. I am struck by the lack of comment on the jobless projection, because implementation of this plan certainly does not mean that everybody will have a job. I read the objective that it will attack the social exclusion and marginalisation caused by unemployment and by poverty. I note that "it will attack the social exclusion..." which is quite a radical objective. The plan does not propose to tackle the problem as a whole but rather attacks it in a limited way. The hope has been built up that this plan will constitute the resolution to all our problems. Some people will do well out of it, others will not. What does one do when the potential for civil strife enters in, when people become even more frustrated when they discover they are not beneficiaries of this plan, particularly when it comes to employment? The Government should come clean on it. We must recognise that there is much work to be done and, more to the point, very many skills on offer and many job opportunities. The Minister for Agriculture and Food mentioned a number but had scant regard for organic farming which I believe to be one of the most labour-intensive forms of employment imaginable.

I note also that the energy proposals of the plan do not have any regard to combined heat and power, another area of employment potential. Effectively, it means we are offering a "sponge" to the 300,000 people unemployed when we know that objective is not practicable. We ought question that aspect of the plan. Because we have the blind belief that this money will solve all of our problems, various crucial factors have been neglected.

A fair section is devoted to energy and its usage in the plan but some very obvious factors have been omitted. For example, the Poolbeg power station in Ringsend is undergoing alterations. As I have mentioned, the potential exists for a combined heat and power system. I am reliably informed by experts that such a system would increase the efficiency of this 470 megawatts power station from its present 50 per cent capacity to 90 per cent, which would be a huge saving on fuel imports, in addition to reducing pollution. I understand that pipes have been laid and some building work commenced around Ringsend. These are obvious potential savings not referred to in the plan. Surprisingly the Taoiseach referred to this matter in the National Gallery at an environmental conference on 5 May. I thought he referred to it because of his personal interest, but it appears to have been an off-the-cuff remark. Instead there is a commitment in the plan to the building of a peat-fired generating station, without any consideration of the potential for energy conservation or rotation forestry. The projected cost of fossil fuels in the future is not dealt with. The natural gas link has been mentioned, yet, there is no talk about the future price of gas, which will probably be high.

There is in existence a United Nations Sulphur Protocol which has been ignored. I do not think the plan's provisions have been subject to an environmental impact assessment. That United Nations Sulphur Protocol has been signed by the United States and all European countries except us. We will go ahead blindly earning ourselves the ignominious name of being the "dirty man of Europe" when it is understood exactly what is proposed. That is of no help to many sectors of potential employment such as tourism and agriculture. I plead that the energy proposals of the plan be reconsidered.

I am delighted to be able to herald some good news, namely the transport proposals of the plan. There is the option of a light rail transit system for Dublin which will be of enormous benefit. There is also some talk of expenditure on the creation of bicycle lanes; I understand that six are being considered, yet the need for them is much greater than has been acknowledged. It is my wish that more Members of this House would take part in protests such as that yesterday outside this House when Dublin cyclists got together to demonstrate their frustration at the lack of such bicycle lanes. The upgrading of the rail lines is welcome but I note there is to be no extension. It is contended that the implementation of this plan will enhance and develop the lives of rural communities, yet we rely on main lines only.

In agriculture, if jobs really were the issue being addressed I believe that organic farming would figure more visibly in the plan. There is enormous over-reliance on high input, chemical, export-orientated enterprise with its resultant pollution and dependence on the vagaries of the international market. Agri-tourism appears to be somewhat of a misnomer when we remember that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry is responsible for hare coursing, which is by no means an attractive sport to many foreign tourists. The Minister mentioned that forestry would be important, yet its potential in terms of the preservation and enhancement of wildlife was not acknowledged or emphasised. That objective ought be dove-tailed within the forestry sector because many tourists wish to see our wildlife.

It is a sad day for industry when the director general of IBEC finds it necessary to remind the Government that the plan gives scant recognition to the introduction of clean technology, not merely "cleaner" as is referred to in the plan. While the plan does acknowledge the need to devise some method of dealing with our present levels of hazardous waste, it does not highlight the need to internalise waste within the production cycle, which is really where the answer lies. The spectre of an incinerator still looms like a pall of smoke on the horizon in that its construction has neither been denied nor advanced. My fear is that the result of such indecision will lead to even greater levels of polluting industry, without any incentive being given to adopt clean technology. The latter omission is the most tragic of all.

While welcoming certain aspects of the plan I cannot but recognise that it is full of contradictions, if not, in some places, hypocrisy. It talks about investing to protect the environment, yet enormous weight is given to private car transport and it favours fossil fuels almost exclusively. It favours chemical farming and the possibility of the construction of a national waste incinerator. No alternative is mentioned. The paper used in the plan's production is far from being recycled, which is probably symbolic but nonetheless worthy of mention.

The tragedy of the overall proposals of the plan is that they will not cure unemployment. Its authors do not appear to realise that paid employment should be distributed on an equitable, properly shared basis. That is the crux of the matter. For example, if the dole and other social welfare benefits were similarly distributed equitably at least people would have the dignity of work as an option and suffer no loss in their living standards, which is what the objective should be.

While the plan contains some good intentions, it constitutes a type of Euro dole which is not sustainable. It ought to be a sustainable plan. Its proposals and objectives should be reviewed on that basis.

Mr. T. Foxe

I welcome this plan. An investment of £20 billion at any stage should be welcomed by everybody. Unless we adopt a different approach to the utilisation of our spending power this plan will be of no avail. Between 1985 and 1992 consumer spending increased by £5.1 billion at a time when unemployment was soaring beyond the 250,000 mark. During that period not one extra job was created. If we have not learned anything from that the outcome for the spending of the £20 billion looks very stark for job creation.

One of the reasons unemployment continued to soar during the years we spent those extra billions was that £3 out of every £5 we spent went on imported goods. If we continue to utilise our spending power in that fashion the future for all of us is bleak. The power to solve our problems rests in our own hands. There is no point in looking to somebody else to continue to pump money into the economy if we do not do anything to help ourselves. However, it is better to have that £20 billion than to be without it.

I should like to comment on some areas of expenditure. In regard to the environment, £66 million will be spent on cleaning up the environment. Most of that money will be spent on sewage treatment plants, the largest of which will be in Dublin, and at other selected sites. We have always prided ourselves on the clean, pure, fresh drinking water in Ireland as well as the good fishing waters in our rivers and lakes. That will no longer be the case if we continue to allow our local authorities to pump untreated sewage into our rivers and lakes. That is why the money being spent on the environment is of great importance. We all benefit from clean drinking water and clean rivers and lakes. Our tourism industry, on which we will rely more and more, also benefits.

A sum of £1.7 billion will be spent. The sum of £500 million will be spent on county and regional roads. That will be sweet music to the people of north Longford, Roscommon and Cavan who, during the past five or six years, have had to travel on tracks which used to be roads. I hope this is the beginning of the end of their frustration. The road improvements from Sligo, through Claremorris, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Rosslare will, no doubt, be of tremendous benefit to those on the western seaboard and should entice industry to the west.

The plan proposed the spending of £250 million on the rail network. I noted with interest that the rail lines Dublin-Cork, Dublin-Galway, Dublin-Limerick, Dublin-Sligo will be improved. A vast area which is not affected by those rail lines, namely that between Athlone, Roscommon, Castlerea and Westport with a branch line north through Castlebar and Ballina, is not mentioned. In the past we have been told that one of the reasons for little or no industry going west is because of poor infrastructure and the high cost of transport. This is an ideal opportunity to redress that problem. When the Minister prepares his plans to improve the rail network I hope he will include the line from Athlone and Roscommon to Ballina.

I note that money will be spent on Dublin Airport and on the regional airports — Cork and Shannon — but there has been no reference to Connaught Regional Airport. We pay lip service to preserving rural communities and rural life and when it comes to practicalities we do not do anything constructive to entice people to continue to live in those areas or open industries there. In that respect I am referring specifically to the west where both the railway network and the airport have been omitted.

In regard to agriculture, according to some commentators, a sum of £1.5 billion will be spent but according to others the spending will be £2.2 billion. Either figure is a sizeable sum and even if it is £1.5 billion it still represents a doubling of the figure spent on agriculture during the period of the previous plan. Agriculture has been the backbone of the Irish economy for a long time and still is. It accounts for 22 per cent of our total exports and for one in six industrial jobs. When we talk about agriculture we are not merely referring to farming per se but the agricultural industry which accounts for jobs in rural Ireland as well as in the cities and towns.

In regard to agriculture the National Plan states that the principal objectives in the period 1994 to 1999 will be the achievement of higher levels of efficiency, quality, market orientation and competitivity in all areas of agriculture and food production. It states that the strategy necessary to achieve the objectives will involve improving structures in the area of primary agricultural production and promoting efficient quality and market-led output at all levels of the food chain and promoting the production of non-surplus products.

What non-surplus products have we in mind or what research has been carried out on those products? More important, what research do we intend carrying out in the future? Without a good research programme our agricultural industry will fall flat. To achieve the agricultural aims set out in the plan we need a vibrant research unit, properly staffed and financed. In the past we had a beef research unit in Grange; a research unit in the faculty of agricultural science in UCD where twinning in cattle was pioneered and developed; a cereals research unit in Oakpark; a dairying research unit in Fermoy and a sheep research unit in Belcare. Our sheep numbers have increased from less than two million five years ago to in excess of five million today.

I appeal to the Minister to ensure that sufficient finance is made available for those research units. Without them we will not be able to compete on the open market. Our competitors will not supply us with the most up to date information.

Minister for Education (Ms Bhreathnach)

This debate is taking place at a criticial time for education. We are engaged in a historic development in the consultative process on education policy, namely the National Education Convention which is taking place in Dublin Castle this week and next. This convention completes the consultative phase leading to the formulation of a White Paper which will establish the direction of education policy well into the next century.

The Programme for a Partnership Government recognised that education is the key to the promotion and attainment of equality and prosperity in society. Already, despite the need for strong budgetary discipline, the Government has shown its commitment to meeting the objectives set out in the programme for Government. The National Development Plan is another phase in the implementation of the Government's commitments.

The plan is, effectively, the most comprehensive multi-annual plan yet attempted in an economic, social planning and budgetary context in Ireland. It is, of course, centred on the availability of EC Structural Funds and has, therefore, in so far as the education measures are concerned, to take account of the regulations under which these funds operate. At the launch of the National Development Plan, the Taoiseach placed the plan in the context of the full range of Government policies. In a similar way it is important to place the educational aspects of the plan in the context of the broad thrust of educational policy and, in particular, to place the resources for education from the National Development Plan in the context of overall resource allocation to education. The Programme for a Partnership Government places great emphasis on education. It also commits the Government to very clear targets which have resource implications. Some of these commitments will be met under the National Development Plan and the remainder from Exchequer funding.

Accordingly, this is not a multi-annual plan for the whole education sector. It is, rather, a focused programme with clearly defined objectives designed to achieve more effective participation in the education and training system in accordance with aims and objectives in the Programme for a Partnership Government.

It is 30 years since the authors of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion stated that:

The contribution of physical capital alone to economic development can never be sufficient... the creation of wealth depends on people and their attributes and attitudes... better education and training will support and stimulate economic expansion. Even the returns from investment in education and training are likely to be as high in the long run as those from investment in physical capital.

In an era which has seen such dramatic changes in work practices and the new technology revolution, skill obsolescence is occurring at a rate and scale which policy makers of the 1960s could not have foreseen. Commensurate with change in the economic sphere, social changes have in many ways been equally dramatic.

This accelerating rate of change, in our society and economy, makes major demands on our education and training systems. They must be capable of adjusting and adapting to new needs, in order to ensure that all our people, young and old, will have the capacity to participate fully and developmentally in the process of economic and social progress. I am glad that the National Development Plan represents the Government's commitment to these guiding principles, with its major investment in our people through education, training and employment measures.

Earlier this year, the Programme for a Partnership Government committed the Government to acknowledge education as the key to our future prosperity and to equality and equal opportunities for all our citizens. The National Development Plan gives concrete expression to this commitment. The Government sees education as critically important to its coordinated approach to promoting social and economic development and to tackling the widespread disadvantage and social exclusion that exists in our society today. It is against this philosophical background that the Government has committed to education £1,545 million over a six year period, as part of the National Development Plan. This commitment from the Government to education will provide the opportunity for us not only to substantially increase funding in education, but also heralds a move to transform the nature and quality of Irish education.

The total provision in the plan for education measures is £1,545 million for the six years 1994-99. A total of £561 million is allocated for relevant second-level programmes; £793 million for third-level programmes and £191 million for capital expenditure on specific objectives within second and third level capital expenditure budgets. Overall the average annual allocation is £257 million which is a 60 per cent increase on the average annual allocation indicated at the start of the last round. On the capital side the average annual allocation is twice the level indicated at the start of the last round.

The clearly defined objectives of the focused education programme in the plan are: to tackle education disadvantage and social exclusion; to transform the content of the classroom curriculum, particularly at post-primary, senior cycle; to increase participation at the completion of senior cycle at post-primary from 73 per cent to 90 per cent, not only through relevant curricula but also through greatly improved physical facilities, particularly in the vocational area; to revolutionise classroom activity through a comprehensive programme of inservice training at primary, post-primary and third level; to ensure that every teacher avails of continuing career development by having access to localised and top quality inservice training, including in dedicated teacher centres; to put in place a certification system for educational and vocational awards that will have both national and international status through the establishment of the National Education and Training Certification Board and to break the cycle of disadvantage through substantial education intervention at primary and secondary level, as part of the integrated local community initiative programme. This will involve a number of measures including support for a head start programme at pre-school level, and other support services at primary and post-primary level in disadvantaged areas.

To this end, the measures seek to strike a balance between the competing demands for resources in order to achieve optimum participation rates in education and training in accordance with the Government's commitment to the central importance of education to social wellbeing; support for second-chance education needs through programmes such as Youthreach and the vocational training opportunity scheme and quality improvements at all levels to ensure relevance to the much wider range of ability levels now participating in education to industry needs and to the technological skills, adaptability and creativity which will be crucial to our competitiveness in the years ahead.

Specifically, the plan provides for, in addition to the continuation of post leaving cert programmes, certificate and diploma programmes in the Regional Technical Colleges and the Dublin Institute of Technology sector: more than £200 million for the continuation and further development of education for the Youthreach, travellers and VTOS programmes and for the education content of the local community initiative programme, and £128 million for the restructuring, expansion and the development of the leaving certificate vocational programme and the leaving certificate applied courses. A particular emphasis in this resructuring will be an expansion of the teaching of languages. A sum of £39 million will be provided for inservice training at primary and post-primary level, and £10 million at third level and £11 million (capital) for the upgrading, improvement and development of dedicated inservice teacher-training centres at regional locations. Under the plan £60 million (capital) will be provided for improved facilities for vocational and technological subjects at second level and £120 million (capital) will be allocated for improved and developed facilities at third level. The plan proposes to allocate £12 million for the establishment and operation of the National Education Training Certification Board and £9 million for research and enterprise development programmes in third level, including a particular focus on the Dublin Institute of Technology-RTC sector.

I have decided that particular emphasis will be placed in my Department's measures on tackling educational disadvantage, particularly in the context of the local development programme. This is the first time a fully integrated approach is being adopted to tackle the many problems which militate against the life success of persons in disadvantaged areas. The educational initiatives will build on the success of the special measures in favour of disadvantaged areas which have operated in the education sector over the past number of year. Within the Structural Fund initiatives in excess of £200 million will be expended by the education sector on special programmes for the disadvantaged between 1994 and 1999, including provision being made for education initiatives within the local development programme.

Another major focus on my part will be in the area of teacher development. This aspect of the education system has been under-funded for many years. A ringing demand, from virtually all sectors of the educational world, has been for a robust programme of in-service development of teachers. I am very much aware of the importance they place on in-service. The major process of reform of our education system on which we will be embarking over the coming years, will place particular demands on teachers. It is, of course, common wisdom that the effectiveness with which new policy initiatives are translated into practice will depend critically on our teachers. From the beginning of the formulation of the National Development Plan one of my priority aims has been to put a substantial programme of in-service in place. I am particularly delighted, therefore, to have achieved funding for a major programme of in-service. It represents, I believe, a quantum leap in the funding of in-service development for teachers.

During the period of the plan almost £50 million will be expended to provide a comprehensive programme of in-service training for teachers in the first, second and third levels of education. This is a key element in the strategy to reform the education system. It represents a massive increase in the current level of funding. Programme development will be an integrated element of the measure.

I am committed to major curricular change, particularly in the senior cycle of second level schooling. A number of factors emerge when looking at the suitability of current curriculum objectives and content, including the need to restructure the curriculum, particularly the senior cycle curriculum, to cater more effectively for the much wider range of ability levels now participating at this level. Of course, my objective is increase participation and retention rates of 90 per cent of the age cohort. This requires radical new approaches to the curriculum. In the Programme for Government we indicated our intention to introduce changes designed to foster a spirit of creativity and innovation among students. In addition the need for change in the curriculum at second level and particularly in the senior cycle has been highlighted by a number of commentators, notably the industrial policy review group and most recently the National Economic and Social Council.

It is my intention to broaden Irish education to equip students more effectively for life and for work in an increasingly interdependent world of nations. I recently announced a new initiative in regard to the senior cycle — the introduction of the applied leaving certificate. I have now secured in the National Plan the resources necessary to carry through the restructuring of the senior cycle.

It is worth recording that some time ago when the EC Commission asked the employers group in Brussels to identify the range of skills which it considered young people should acquire in education and training, the group recommended a list which included:

Commitment to quality, ability to communicate effectively, knowledge of one or more foreign languages; the desire to use and develop new technologies; a general grasp of the importance of the economic environment in which firms function; problem solving capacity; willingness to adapt to change; ability to work in a team and to relate to others; an understanding of economics and the labour market...

The funds provided in the National Development Plan for vocational preparation and training programmes — £325 million between 1994 and 1999 — will enable me to maintain existing programmes and achieve our objectives to restructure the senior cycle to better enable our young people to acquire the skills and competencies to which I have already referred. Those skills and competencies, I am sure the House will agree, will be best provided for within a properly structured and responsive education system.

Achievement of our objectives will require significant attitudinal and structural changes within the educational system amongst parents, students, teachers and school management. It will require a recognition that we must have a society in which there are education and vocational training opportunities for all our young people — opportunities which will result in a recognised and marketable qualification and which avoid the error of earlier decades which failed to recognise the vital importance of a properly structured, overarching certification system embracing the education and training systems and the workplace.

We are in a qualifications based society. The more we seek to improve the quality of the workforce the more we have to recognise this fact and to make provision to facilitate the continuous upgrading of skills and qualifications. I am glad to say that the Government has recognised the necessity in agreeing to my proposal to provide £12 million between 1994 and 1999 to establish a national certification system. This provision is a fulfilment of the Government's commitment to a need identified in its response to Culliton.

The establishment of a national education and training certification board, the operation of which I am discussing with my colleague, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, will contribute significantly to ensuring the effectiveness of the vocational education and training measures being supported by Structural Funds. This new board will improve access of our young people to the labour market and further training through the provision of marketable certification with the active involvement of the social partners, the establishment of a national framework of levels of qualification which will set a clear frame of reference for employers for the evaluation of individual qualifications/skills and facilitate progression to higher levels of training, and an improved opportunity to acquire international recognition for our qualifications.

Our third level sector has made a major contribution to our economic development. The capacity of the sector to respond to national, regional and local manpower requirements has been significantly enhanced by the new legislative framework for the regional technical colleges and the Dublin Institute of Technology which came into effect this year. The Government is committed to enabling these colleges continue their unique contribution to national development. The funds allocated in the plan for certificate and diploma courses, research and enterprise development, apprenticeship in conjunction with FÁS and tourism courses in conjunction with CERT, will enable the colleges to carry through their essential mandate.

The availability of highly skilled technicians and technologists has long been acknowledged as a major factor in the attractiveness of Ireland as a base for mobile international manufacturing investment. However, we cannot be complacement. I am satisfied that these colleges, and our universities, can further develop their contribution to the economic wellbeing of our people. To this end, the advanced technical skills programme, for which £53 million is being allocated for the duration of the plan, will be restructured to give it a sharper focus as a vehicle for the provision of the highest levels of skilled manpower in our economy.

In referring to the role which our third level institutions can play in our economic development, I am mindful of the statement in a recent report by the Industrial Research and Development Advisory Committee of the EC that "the output of the education and training systems — including in particular higher education — in terms of both quantity and quality of skills at all levels is the prime determinant of a country's level of industrial productivity and hence competitiveness."

The funds being specifically provided for within the National Development Plan for the third level sector, including £10.5 million for retraining of teachers and lecturers and £120 million for infrastructure, will enhance the capacity of the sector not only to respond more effectively to the manpower requirements of the economy but to further enhance the leadership potential of our third level institution, in the process of social and economic change. I intend to ensure that these significant additional funds for the system will be strategically applied to improve the quality of the courses in the third level sector and thus enhance its contribution to our international competitiveness.

Mr. E. Kenny

Does that include Castlebar and Thurles?

Ms Bhreathnach

The education measures included in the National Development Plan represent a coherent strategic use of the Structural Funds within the regulations governing the operation of these funds. They address key priorities for the development of our communities and our economy through the provision of highly educated and trained manpower as well as providing better opportunity for those who were previously marginalised in the labour market. For the first time Structural Funds are being applied to address the problems giving rise to early school leaving and consequently difficulties in the labour market. Also, the Structural Funds are being targeted as never before on the key players in the delivery of a quality system — our teachers. Quality in the system is also being addressed by the substantial allocation of funds for a national certification system.

The availability of the level of fund now allocated to the education sector within the Structural Funds offer a unique opportunity to ensure that the sector is developed in a manner which enhances quality of opportunity particularly for persons from disadvantaged areas, results in a system more responsive to the requirements of the individual and the labour market, enables our teachers to equip themselves to meet the challenges of a changing society and the ever increasing rapidity of skills obsolescence; and in facilitating economic development, contributes to a society which cherishes more effectively all the children of the nation equally. I am satisfied that the education measures included in the plan will clearly meet these objectives.

Over the last nine months I have initiated a series of measures to bring about substantial change in education. There is an air of optimism in education. The changes initiated include changes in resource allocation, changes in what goes on in the classroom and changes in the administration of education. The education measures in the National Plan form an integrated part of this overall policy direction.

Mr. R. Bruton

Many people do not share the Minister's optimism. Figures I received from the Minister for Enterprise and Employment this week indicated that during the latest year for which figures are available the number of children who left school without any qualification increased by 44 per cent. That is an incredible increase. It is unfortunate that the Minister is choosing to leave the Chamber when I am addressing a specific point in relation to disadvantaged school children. This year the highest number of students left school with no qualification.

Ms Bhreathnach

I must go to Dublin Castle.

Mr. R. Bruton

That is part of the problem that arises as a result of this plan and the process involved in its preparation. The process of developing a national plan is an offence to people who would like to see open and democratic participation in key decision-making. It was drawn up by an elite group and involved no proper democratic contribution. It was sent to Brussels before we had a chance to tease out its implications. This is in stark contrast to what happened in Northern Ireland where the programme was available to the public for examination for six months before it was submitted. The monitoring of this programme will be carried out in secret using indicators not referred to in the plan. It is extremely disappointing that a Government that prides itself on openness and providing value for money in public spending should choose to do its business behind closed doors.

If we wish to seriously address the issues facing us under the National Development Plan we must look at what happened under the last plan. The reality is extremely grim. The plan promised 160,000 jobs of which only 40,000 were realised despite the fact that growth during the period of that plan exceeded all expectations. It was 60 per cent greater than that forecast in the previous plan and yet its jobs target was dismally wrong. The reality of unemployment is very real for the 63,000 extra people who became unemployed during the course of that plan and, if we are to be honest, the 17,500 people who were reallocated to pre-retirement schemes should be also included. Those figures provide a grim statistic of an extra 80,000 unemployed during the course of the last national plan.

The ESRI also confirmed that 98,000 people emigrated during that period. The figures I received from the Taoiseach this week illustrate the grim nature of that emigration toll. Up to 90,000 young people under the age of 25 emigrated during the course of the last national plan, which represents 30 per cent of those who attended school ten years ago. That emigration figure includes 7,500 of our highly qualified graduates, comprising 1,300 engineers, 1,200 business graduates and 1,000 scientists. We cannot afford that attrition. Up to 28 per cent of our graduates emigrated in the first year after qualification. If a proper survey was carried out I am sure we would find that 30 per cent to 50 per cent of our graduates are emigrating. The taxpayer spent £200 million educating those privileged 7,500 graduates who will now be of benefit to overseas economies. All the talk about training is not enough; we need programmes to employ the people we train. There should be greater emphasis on ensuring that those engineers and business graduates are placed to benefit small and medium sized Irish firms who badly need skills in marketing, engineering and quality control. The investment in their education is being squandered and dissipated to other countries.

The unemployment figures were grim and because of the way the Government doctored them during past few years we do not have a coherent series of figures to compare. In so far as there is a coherent series of figures which understates the true growth in unemployment the sad toll of a 30 per cent increase in unemployment across the board is evident. Counties Longford — the home county of the Taoiseach — and Westmeath topped the league and experienced the heaviest unemployment during the past five years. The last plan did not bring benefits. In Galway unemployment reached 40 per cent. Only a handful of counties benefited from the plan. There was a fall in unemployment in only one county during the course of the national plan — my native county of Meath — and that says something for the enterprising nature of the people of Meath and their capacity to choose wise public representatives.

We must examine why we are failing, despite high economic growth, to produce jobs. During the past few weeks I compared our unemployment figures to those of other EC countries. During the recent eight year period we were unique in that we achieved 50 per cent higher economic growth than any of the other EC countries. GNP rose by 36 per cent during that period which was far higher than other EC countries, but we experienced the lowest growth in employment. Our employment level grew by only 1 per cent at a time when employment in other EC countries grew by 12 per cent. To put that in a nutshell, we are ten times worse at turning growth into jobs. If the Governments of the other EC countries were running their policies in Ireland we would have created 24,000 jobs per annum over that period. That is the reality of how we have failed to square up to our EC partners despite the injection of massive funds.

The Government is expecting that there will be a reduction in the rate of economic growth during the period of the new plan yet it stated that the gross jobs target will be increased. It stated that there will be a substantial increase in net jobs over that of the last plan. That is an issue the Government should clarify. If its plan produces a decline in economic growth most people would fear that it would dismally fail to reach the jobs target. The only clue to this is that the Government must be expecting a fall in the rate of job loss during the course of the national plan. It must have some policies to reduce job losses because the gross jobs target is the same. However, the plan does not illustrate a strategy to reduce job losses.

If the unexplained structural change in the economy that the Government foresees is accepted, what will be the result at the end of the period of the plan? There will be a net growth in employment of 10,000 jobs per annum at a time when 25,000 more people will be looking for work. The implication of that is that 60,000 people must either join the dole queue or emigrate. That is a grim statistic. If that is the best the Government can come up with having been given £20 billion to spend, it is a poor outlook for policy-making within Government circles. In the period of the last national plan, the only item that exceeded target was Government spending. It exceeded that target by 5 per cent per annum in excess of the consumer price index and it did not produce any better services, as the Labour Party repeatedly pointed out. Unfortunately this plan again proves the Government's capacity to spend but it is far from convincing as to policies which would provide any decent rate of return. On the issue of rate of return for projects, the plan is totally silent, particularly in the sphere of industrial training.

The acid test as to whether we can use money effectively under this plan is to compare it to the alternative use to which the money can be put. The alternative use is to pay off our debt and reform our tax system. The Government should try to convince the Dáil, and we should have the opportunity to vote on it, that it has the capacity to spend this money wisely to give better returns in employment than if we reformed our tax code. There is no suggestion that that was asked of the projects being put forward. There is no suggestion that the investment in the railways, for instance, was based on the rate of return which would be achieved. Many people are sceptical about the choice of projects. If the Government feels it can choose winners it should have the honesty to tell us the basis on which it has chosen the winners and the targets to be achieved and let us evaluate the achievements. This plan depressingly repeats the approach of the last plan which on any assessment was a failure.

The chapter on human resources is also depressing. There is one bottom line figure about the money to be spent but there is nothing about the cost of the different programmes or what they are designed to achieve. The plan talks about placement as if once achieved it indicated good spending. Even if one accepted the suspect placement figures as a test, the placements during the course of the last programmes are substantially repeated and extended in the new human resource area. Only 30 per cent of the people who participated in the alternance programme and only 16 per cent of those who participated in the social employment scheme were at work a year after participation. Of those who participated in the Rolls Royce section of the FÁS scheme, the specific skills training courses for people over 25 years, after one year less than 50 per cent were working. That is what happened in terms of placement. In dealing with the human resource area it would be nice to see some reference in the plan as to whether those results were achievements or disappointments and as to whether the targets have been changed, if placement is the issue.

The plan does not analyse placement beyond this global figure of 75 per cent of FÁS courses. Without analysis all we will have will be a creaming off of the best people to go on the courses, because the only thing that will concern the Government will be this placement figure. That is what happened the last time. We have ample evidence from ERSI work that the courses which were apparently successful and got the green light were the ones which took in Leaving Certificate students, people starting with high qualifications. We deserve better from the Government if it is going to spend £3.7 billion in the next six years on these human resource activities. We should know that precise training targets are set for the spending of this money under each scheme and how it is to be evaluated so that we can see what progress has been made. Let there be no doubt that there are alternative uses for this money.

The part of the plan which deals with the food industry depresses me and I am glad that it was quickly picked up by people from the food industry. The Programme for National Recovery in 1987 was the first of these plans and it promised 2,500 extra jobs in the food industry. The reality is that the food industry has declined by 10,000 jobs in the course of the last few years and is now stagnant. It is unrealistic to say that we will spend £305 million in this sector and to talk about growing employment targets when we know that caps have been put on production in this sector. There is an air of unreality in the way the Government is approaching this programme for the food sector.

This plan has repeated the last national plan and the promises to cherish the small businessman and the small entrepreneur and to develop his capabilities. Those were the targets during the period when £600 million was spent per year on industry between tax reliefs and grants, according to the Culliton report. At the end of it all we had 3,500 extra jobs in industry. The same targets have been repeated in this programme. The public, particularly small business people, do not believe the Government. The reality is that the IDA gives 95 per cent more money to create a job in a large company than in a small company and gives 66 per cent more to create a job in a foreign-owned company than in an Irish-owned company.

In the plan there is no understanding of what is really happening in our economy on the jobs front. It is only the service sector which is growing. It provided 40,000 extra jobs, ten times the rate of growth of the industrial sector, during the period of the last plan but there is nothing here to support their efforts. Part-time work has dramatically transformed our labour force. During the period of the last national plan male employment declined and we have seen a growth of part-time work, bringing more women into the labour force. We should have positive measures to encourage that trend, to support the idea of women coming into the labour force and to expand the services sector.

There should be a commitment to work sharing and to the notion of solidarity agreements that can expand work. Instead, we see the tired old appeals that if wages are reduced by 1 per cent 4,000 extra jobs will be created. Who says so, and where is the proof? Such assertions do not use statistics to prove anything. If there is to be pay moderation there must be a solidarity contract. People must see that their pay moderation will be turned into jobs at plant level. That can only be done as it was done in France and Italy if the Government gets involved and provides incentives for work sharing and employment expanding. We have a long way to go if we are to face the policy changes needed to make this country successful and to create employment. I am sad that there is not even a beginning of change in the national plan.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Ms E. Fitzgerald)

I apologise to the House for the omission of Appendix V, which gives the regional maps, from the printed document. It will be circulated to Members. In fact Members have already seen it circulated as part of the new regional structures.

This is the last time we are likely to see a funding increase on this scale from Brussels. In preparing the plan, we were extremely conscious that these were not "free" funds from Brussels, that value for money should be central to the choice of programmes and projects and that the plan should be ultimately judged by its permanent contribution to job creation and to Ireland's economic performance when the last ECU had been spent.

As I have previously told the House, departmental proposals to spend these funds amounted to over twice the funding available. The Government was acutely aware that each allocation in the plan had to be judged against the alternative ways of spending the money. In preparing proposals, Departments were asked to quantify the employment effect of their proposals as well as their impact in relation to other criteria — impact on the long term unemployed and disadvantaged, gender balance, environmental impact, impact on regional rural development and co-operation with Northern Ireland.

This plan is certainly not a clone of previous ones. It contains new thinking, new ideas and, most importantly, it draws on the lessons learned from experience. New elements in this plan are its focus on tackling disadvantage and poverty, its emphasis on gender balance, its practical concern for the environment and its strong regional dimension.

One of my central concerns was that this plan would be one that would reach into the heart of every community and in particular to those areas most blighted by chronic unemployment and poverty. The local development programme is an imaginative new initiative, building on the experience of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress area-based partnerships in tackling unemployment from a community focus.

To tackle unemployment in those areas where it may run up to 80 per cent, and where unemployment and poverty run a high risk of perpetuation from one generation to the next, we must rebuild their economic potential. Rebuilding skills, capability and enterprise among those who have become detached from the economic system may not give the same immediate returns as investing in areas with a sound economic base, but it is a vital element of any National Plan which claims to be inclusive.

One of the major funding sources of the local development programme is an expanded CEDP scheme. Central to the concept of the local development programme is the employment of local people on worthwhile jobs of tangible benefit to their local community and which have important elements of training and personal development. Contrary to what has been argued by the opposition, this is not just the SES dressed up, rather it is an integrated programme of training and work experience in which participants will work on projects identified by the local community to be of importance to them. Participants can also retain their secondary benefits. This scheme builds on the lessons learned of shortcomings in previous employment schemes in disadvantaged areas particularly, those identified by the PAUL Partnership research study on the SES.

The focus on gender balance is again an innovation for Irish development planning. This will be backed up by a specific monitoring of the plan to this effect — a monitoring which should concentrate the minds of individual agencies involved in implementing the plan.

The plan sees a major shift towards public transport with an investment of over £500 million. The £655 million investment in environmental services will tackle pollution in our coastal and inland waterways and clean up Dublin Bay. Another innovation is the urban renewal programme to enhance the environment of our cities and towns.

The strongest single message I received in meeting local groups prior to the finalisation of the plan was the need to invest in balanced regional development and local infrastructure, in particular county roads. Investment of almost £500 million in this area in the plan is again an innovation. I have consistently underlined, however, that this investment must take place in those roads serving economic development, whether in industry, forestry, fishing or tourism. They must be roads with jobs at the other end of them. Likewise, the new county enterprise structures involve a new tapping into a spirit of local enterprise, a major local focus in the plan and devolution of responsibility to local areas.

In drawing up the plan we had the benefit of a number of different evaluations which had been carried out on individual programmes and on the overall package of Structural Funds 1989-92. Contrary to suggestions made yesterday in the debate, considerable resources were devoted to evaluating the effectiveness of programmes and measures aided under the Structural Funds both at sectoral and national level. These evaluations have led to individual programmes being more sharply focused this time round and have guided the overall structure of the plan which is based on experience.

It is worth noting that the study by the ESRI and others concluded that the 1989-93 CSF will make a significant and lasting difference to living standards in Ireland. The long-run supply side effects of the last CSF will build up over a period and raise permanently GNP by 1.1 per cent by the year 2000. The short term demand side effects will raise GNP by 3.5 per cent in 1993. The ESRI estimates this represents a real rate of return of between 7 and 8 per cent on the investment. The employment effects of the last round of funds are estimated to give a demand side effect of 30,000 extra jobs in 1993 and a long term supply side effect which would raise employment permanently by 10,000. These results compare favourably with the results achieved in other Objective 1 regions of the EC.

The ESRI report on the funds did recommend a major emphasis on education and training, on investment in our human capital, an area where international research shows a return on investment of the order of 7.5 per cent. As outlined by my colleague, the Minister for Education, that emphasis is clearly seen in the plan. While everyone here acknowledges that training in the past has not always been well focused or effective — Deputy Bruton made some good points in that regard — it is far too glib to dismiss all training as being useless. For example, training in CERT is well focused and it has virtually 100 per cent placement rates in the tourism industry. In addition, most FÁS training scores well on that effectiveness measure.

In general, the approach adopted in allocating funds was to focus on areas of clear market failure where the private sector unaided would not achieve the optimal social outcome. For example, in tourism the emphasis is on developing the product range and lengthening the season rather than on subsidising accommodation which the private sector will provide if the tourist numbers are there.

Deputy Fox raised the issue of investment in regional airports. As the regional airports are not being used to their full capacity we felt that it would be better to provide money for marketing rather than to expand these facilities.

The private sector, where it is co-funding expenditure from the EC and the State, is most likely to select those projects for which it sees clear markets so that those projects with the greatest economic return are those which will be pursued. That answers some of the points raised by Deputy Richard Bruton on the rates of return.

Some areas where we might like to commit resources may be ineligible for Structural Funding and would fall to be financed out of domestic Exchequer resources. For example, primary education and housing are not in general eligible for Structural Funding — we have been informed that the European Community will not provide funding for mobile assets for international tourists and freight traffic — and the application of urban renewal funding to outer suburbs as advocated by Deputy Doyle may likewise be limited.

In the implementation of the plan it is important to avoid deadweight or displacement expenditures — deadweight, where the State funds activity which would have taken place anyway without such a subsidy, displacement being activity which simply displaces another project elsewhere in the economy.

Despite being built on careful evaluation, where possible, it is not always possible to compare scientifically one programme or project with another, particularly where two entirely different sectors are concerned. There is an element of judgment involved. Throughout the preparation of the plan, however, the Government's main target has been to achieve the maximum long term return in terms of sustainable jobs and lasting increases in our economic potential.

The Government's concern has been to ensure the maximum long term sustainable jobs from the funds which can mean that some programmes with greater job numbers in the short term must take second place to projects with a lasting benefit to output potential and competitiveness. Building motorways with a pick and shovel, for example, is labour intensive but hardly efficient and short term considerations must take second place to long term gain.

The plan aims to create 200,000 gross jobs and 70,000 to 100,000 net non-agricultural jobs. We have been criticised for including a net jobs figure with the implied job losses. It would be more honest to talk about a net jobs figure and face economic reality. These figures are based on our experience during the past few years in the economy. We cannot be insulated from technological and economic change. Indeed the reality of such change is our only economic certainty. Economies must be judged on how well they manage change and the key investments in the plan in education and training are designed to improve our ability as a people to cope with economic change.

The plan will make a substantial contribution to jobs growth but will certainly not be sufficient to tackle the jobs crisis in isolation. It must be pointed out that the plan is one element and one element only of the Government's economic strategy. Other elements, including improved international competitiveness, increased support for risk-taking and tax reform, must follow if we are to improve our overall growth rate and increase the job intensity of economic activity and economic growth. The fact that these elements are not included in today's document does not signify that they are absent from the Government's economic programme, in fact it is the contrary.

One proposal which has caught the public imagination in recent weeks has been that from the CMRS to provide voluntary meaningful work opportunities for those on the dole. This echoes an earlier proposal made by David Buttimer to the Oireachtas committee on jobs, and I am glad that the idea is being actively studied by that committee's successor, the broadbased National Economic and Social Forum. Such a proposal is not without cost, in terms of materials, training and quality supervision. There are also many practical issues which needs to be addressed involving the relationship and overlap with existing job schemes, as well as the issues of displacement and deadweight. The proposal is being studied with the seriousness such an imaginative idea deserves. I am sure practical propositions will emerge which will confront the paradox of mass unemployment while there is work of social importance crying out to be done.

The main criticism of the Opposition parties has centred around the fact that this plan is not a document about tax reform. I have heard little or no criticism about the substance of the plan itself, about the actual allocations or the details of the programmes. Instead the Opposition has set up a man of straw and proceeded to demolish it.

Tax reform issues are a matter for the budget, and will be dealt with in that context. No Government changes the income tax code half way through the tax year.

This Government is committed to tax reform focused on the low paid, unlike the tax reforms pursued with such zeal by the Progressive Democrats in Government, which concentrated the benefits of tax reduction on the better off. Deputy Mary Harney's speech yesterday would seem to indicate that there is no danger of the Progressive Democrats drifting to the centre. There is a real problem of poverty traps acknowledged on all sides of this House, and this Government has assigned special responsibility to the Minister of State, Deputy Joan Burton, to examine the integration and interaction of the income tax and social welfare codes. The issues involved are complex. As an illustration, the definition of family for social welfare purposes is the de facto family, while the tax code deals with the legal family based on marriage. An expert working group under Donal Nevin has been established to examine these issues and its interim report, due before the budget, is expected to inform the Government's approach in the budget.

There is, however, an almost unreal belief among the Opposition that tax reform is a panacea for all the countries' ills, something not borne out by the economic evidence. Internationally, the economic literature does not show any clear link between low tax rates and low unemployment. Indeed Ireland is in the middle rank of countries in terms of our overall tax burden. We have problems with the structure and distribution of the tax burden but we are not out of line internationally in terms of its level. Last year the ESRI carried out an evaluation of the proposal to reduce employer PRSI at a cost of £300 million. The results showed that taking account of the effects of financing such a cut, the net contribution to jobs by the end of the decade would be 6,000. Allowing for no funding at all of the PRSI cut, net jobs growth amounted to 15,000, about 5 per cent of the total out of work. Clearly, reform of the PRSI structure has some part to play, but it is a relatively modest one and not to be exaggerated. At the moment, employers who take on workers from the live register who are a net addition to their labour force enjoy a PRSI holiday for two years. Under 3,000 workers have been employed under this scheme, again indicating that the claims for the merits of lower PRSI are clearly grossly over exaggerated. The Government's investment programme outlined in the plan is far more significant as a generator of long term maintainable jobs.

Deputy Bruton praised the US economy in its low direct taxation. This economy is also characterised by very poor public services, a failure to invest in education which directly inhibits economic performance, a society where 35 million people have no health insurance and are terrified to become sick, and where there is massive homelessness in the richest society in the world. Low tax low spend economies do not come without real social costs.

I have heard criticism of inadequate consultation in the preparation of this plan. Those criticisms are ill-informed nonsense. In preparing the plan, I met the social partners, I met community and voluntary groups and non-Governmental environmental organisations, I met the Council for the Status of Women, and I had detailed discussions with each of the sub-regional review committees. Each of these groups had prepared detailed written submissions which were an important input into the plan preparation process.

I am happy to announce that far from ignoring the community and voluntary sector, these are to be included for the first time on the regional monitoring committees, and appropriate voluntary sector interests will also be invited to participate in the sectoral monitoring committees for the plan.

In addition there were lengthy debates in both Dáil and Seanad Éireann, and consultation with the Central Review Committee and the National Economic and Social Forum, on which all political groupings in the Oireachtas are represented. If the Opposition parties devoted more attention to the content of their contributions than to whingeing about being consulted, perhaps there would have been more substantive points which the Government could have taken on board in the preparation of the plan. There was little of substance contributed by the Opposition to those debates, although they were given the opportunity and were consulted.

Finally, I would like to pay public tribute in the House to the staff in the EC section of the Department of Finance who have worked incredibly hard to produce the plan, foregoing summer holidays, working nights and weekends, and to all the staff in other Departments who made such a major input into the preparation of the plan. It is a standard of dedicated public service of which we can all be proud.

Mr. E. Kenny

I am annoyed by the Minister's contribution. She is the Minister charged with the expenditure of this £8 billion. I reject her assertion that there was effective consultation with the various groups around the country when the Parliament elected by the people had not a decent opportunity to discuss or vote on this plan prior to its being sent to Brussels. It is true that every organisation in the country was contacted in regard to their objectives in the context of one of the most fundamentally important projects in the history of the State. The Minister of State said that she had received objective plans amounting to over £25 billion but that there would be only £8 billion at her disposal for these purposes. This plan is fundamental to the development of the economy and the general life of this country to bring us into the next century and this Parliament has been given a contemptuous kick in the groin by the Government, which is using this plan as a vehicle for a series of well publicised announcements covering every single issue and problem that could conceivably arise in any part of the country.

I remember listening to a speech by the late John Kelly on a fine summer day outside a small church during a Galway East by-election. He pointed out that all the Fianna Fáil Government of that time did was make promises to the effect that the birds would sing in the trees and the sun would shine continuously. They were joined in this series of promises in the early nineties by the Labour Party who see this plan as their salvation. Mark my words, this plan will be announced at least five times in the next five years and every problem, every major proposal that would lead to the generation of a rural economy will be referred to the great national saviour, the plan.

The programme managers will have mobile phones to answer ministerial queries about whether a certain pier is covered in the plan. Ministers will be told: "Yes, there is a general reference to the pier on page 96 of the plan and we can hide under that for another two years". This plan is the greatest piece of humbuggery ever produced. It will enable Fianna Fáil and Labour Ministers and Deputies to answer all kinds of questions over the next few years. While this may be good politics, it is a contemptuous kick in the groin to the democratic process in this House.

The plan contains a jungle of clichés. One would need a PhD in English to unravel the meaning of some of the phrases used in the plan, phrases that have been very well thought out. I am not surprised that the people who formulated the plan had to work late into the night — they must have confused themselves with some of the details they included. For example, reference is made to the building of by-passes around some of our major towns, including Swinford. As the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Deputy Stagg, knows, that by-pass was opened three months ago. Yet it is included as a long term proposal in the plan. Obviously somebody worked too late into the night and maybe the early hours of the morning. Is this a national plan?

Mr. Durkan

It is last year's plan.

Mr. E. Kenny

The plan has not been voted on by this Parliament. The people to whom the Minister of State, at the Department of Finance, Deputy Fitzgerald, referred have not been given an opportunity to put forward points of substance. How could we when we were not given any idea of what would be included in the plan. As I said, the plan will be the great national saviour of the Government for the next few years.

Some issues outside our control, as well as some in which we have had an input at Council of Ministers level, will have a serious effect on Ireland. For example, the EC CAP reform proposals, as referred to in the context of this plan, will strive to stimulate rural economies to fend for themselves and provide the basis for a regenerated local economy. Yet, the EC CAP reform proposals will lead to thousands of jobs on the land being lost between now and the end of the century. There are also the ongoing GATT talks. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry accepted the proposals put forward last year but he now wants them modified. It is very obvious that the American Government has a fall-back position in this case — it is involved in negotiations with Japan and the Pacific rim countries and it has agreements with Canada and Mexico. Therefore, if the GATT talks do not work out the way it wants it has a fallback on those agreements. Europe's fall-back position is to continue to subsidise until it reaches the stage where it is uneconomic to do so. As I said, some issues are outside our control and they will have devastating consequencies for us in the years ahead.

I listened very carefully to, and read three times, the Taoiseach's speech. He should have outlined what this plan proposes to do. He read out pages of general information and asked if Opposition Deputies knew the effect the plan would have on their areas. That is Fianna Fáil speak for "mind your back, I have £20 billion to allocate and you might be looking for funding for a new clinic, school or road improvements in your constituency. These are included in the plan and will be funded in due course". I listened with astonishment to his speech. I took very careful note of the way John Hume looked at the Taoiseach and at the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs on the steps of Government Buildings following the briefing on the Hume-Adams talks — he seemed to be very apprehensive as to what the Taoiseach might say, and one never knows what he might say: he seems to want to give any kind of answer to questions. I am very disappointed that the Taoiseach did not set out the proposals in the plan for year one, year two, etc, and outline the details of what is actually involved.

Comments have been made about the taxation issue. If private businesses are to invest money to the extent envisaged in the plan, our taxation system will have to be reformed. The last plan promised to create 175,000 jobs at the rate of 35,000 jobs a year. Those jobs were never created, even during the very good times of the early and mid-seventies. At the end of that plan, 80,000 jobs had been created, unemployment had risen by 63,000 and 98,000 people had emigrated. The response to these problems in the plan is the appointment of "mobility trainers", people who train other people to become mobile. These mobility trainers, who will be located in Germany and other countries, will ring up job applicants to tell them that there are 15 jobs on offer in a German company for which they should apply. Mobility trainers are now the new fad used to deal with our emigration problem. Will there be investment to back up the £8 billion from private businesses if our taxation system is not reformed? Will private business people — it costs them £3.30 to give their employees £1 in take-home pay — make an investment if it is not economical for them to do so? With the agreement of the House I wish to share my time with Deputy Durkan.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr. E. Kenny

Reference is made in the plan to the promotion of tourism on an all-Ireland basis. This is a very important point. I was a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Body when this matter was discussed in some detail with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Bord Fáilte. There is great scope for the promotion of this island as an entity from a tourism point of view. There should be far greater Ministerial involvement in ensuring that this is done. The plan says that the number of golfers coming to this country has trebled during the past few years. There is enormous scope for further development in this area.

I wish to refer to the proposals in regard to fisheries. Many people cannot get adequate assistance to help them set up in the fishing industry. For example, Kevin McHugh from Achill recently signed a contract worth £24 million for the building of the largest trawler in the world without any EC or national assistance. The carrying capacity of that trawler would feed 10 million people in one sitting. This man, who started his business some years ago with a currach, should be complimented on this initiative.

I was appalled at the point made by the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Fitzgerald, about development in various parts of the country when there is a map in the plan with a blue line which indicates the very poor quality of the railway line from Athlone to Westport and Ballina. This line is not to be financed under the EC plan though it is the second worst rail line in the country. Has the Minister of State ever been in Heuston Station on a Friday evening when there is a stampede of 500 people down the platform trying to get a seat on a train which can only carry 100 passengers? In the context of a plan which is designed to improve the level of facilities in the more isolated areas, it is an absolute disgrace that this line has not been included for funding under the plan. I know there is a proposal that the upgrading of the line should be financed by Iarnród Éireann, with a sum of £10 million being allocated for this purpose over the next eight to nine years. The priority given to the upgrading of the line in the plan and by Iarnród Éireann means that the line from Athlone to Westport and Ballina will again be confined to the wilderness, and left on the backburner, so to speak.

I should like to know if the county enterprise boards have been set up on a statutory basis or whether they are still being funded from the Central Development Board, as the enterprise board in Galway was until recently.

I am disappointed also that there is no reference to the development of ports on the west coast. I am aware that Coillte made arrangements for the fibre board factory to be located in Waterford. That is appropriate because Waterford has a port and there is a large quantity of timber in that area. However within the next ten years there will be a need for a second fibre board plant and that should be located in the west or north west region but there is no reference in the plan to the development of any major port north of Galway which would cater for that when it comes onstream.

This plan is so general that it will allow county councillors, Fianna Fáil and Labour people, to make references to it. They can refer through the programme managers to the Minister who will say that there is provision in it for whatever application is being made and it will receive approval. The plan presupposes that planning permission will be readily forthcoming in all cases. For instance, in the case the peat power plant in the midlands we are sounding a warning to groups and others of their right to object long before these matters are put in train. We have reached a stage where one cannot even build a hen house without obtaining planning permission and an objection being lodged and appealed to An Bord Pleanála.

I am disappointed at the way the plan has been foisted upon the House. Of course, as a public representative one must welcome the fact that £20 billion will be pumped into the economy. I hope it will not end up like the previous plan which contained merely a set of pious aspirations with no real effect on unemployment at the end of the day.

Mr. Durkan

When discussing a national development plan one must ask, what are the issues. The issues have been adequately dealt with by other speakers and must have been obvious to the Government over the past 12 months. Indeed, they were obvious for some time prior to that. To my mind the main issue is the question of the 382,000 people available for work but who have no work. That figure represents the total number of people currently on the live register, the total number of people on FÁS training courses or other SES schemes and also the total number of students who were unable to obtain work during the summer. It represents also the Government's abdication of its responsibilities to deal with this problem and also the question of hope for the future and the confidence of the people in the Government's ability to deal with the problem.

The Government, obviously, identified the issue and felt that some response was necessary. It summoned every representative group in the country to a meeting to listen to its views. However, having listened to its views it then proceeded to take its own course of action and the national plan it encased is indicative of that action. One Interpretation of it is that it depicts something covered in tinsel which when torn off reveals something written inside. The other interpretation is that it is like a wallpapering job which I am sure is obvious to the Member sitting opposite.

The Government played a foul trick on the people. It is almost tantamount to a parent conspiring with Sana Claus — and we are only two months away from that time of the year — to deceive the unfortunate children by wrapping up last year's toys in new coloured paper and covering them with tinsel along with the usual message of good tidings. This plan is full of vague promises and aspirations but contains little inspiration. It includes much of what we have read and heard on previous occasions. As my colleague, Deputy Kenny said, therein lies the answer to every conceiveable question that a Government Minister or backbencher is likely to be asked during the term of the plan. This plan will be readily referred to for everything whether it be in Munster, Connaught, Ulster or Leinster, whether it involves putting a pump on the side of the road, major road works or a housing scheme. The answer will be that it is in the plan. If it is in the plan it is in the gospel and if it does not appear, it will not happen.

Very few people referred to the fact that we have had this plan before. It is not a huge improvement on the previous plan. It contains a few extra million pounds but it is well packaged, it was well sold and the Government hope to buy peace with it. What is likely to be the outcome? It must be remembered that the issue is the 400,000 people available for work who are unable to obtain work here. Surely that must have sounded a warning to those who composed the plan. If it did why was it not addressed? What we have at the end of the day is utter confusion and the public will awake to the fact in about a year from now that this plan was not all it was cracked up to be, that it was a con job and an effort to deceive the public until such time as something better came along. It is a means of distracting the public attention from the real issues. If I were a Government Minister or backbencher I would be running for cover before the public realise this.

There is nothing in this plan that will resolve the basic problem affecting this country, unemployment. There is nothing in it to tackle the problems that caused unemployment and because of that this plan will not work.

I would like to have been able to greet this plan warmly and say that it was good for the country. If it had contained something other than platitudes I would have welcomed it but unfortunately, it will fall into the maze of bureaucratic double talk and Eurospeak that we have been listening to for several years. At the end of the day the ordinary people of this country will ask themselves what it all means.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment (Mr. Stagg)

I wish to share my time with Deputies Sean Kenny and Éamon Ó Cúiv.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is satisfactory.

Mr. Stagg

As Minister of State with special responsibility for housing and urban renewal there is one area of the national plan about which I am particularly pleased, the provision of £116 million for urban renewal. This is an area for which I have lobbied from the start. With this provision there is huge scope to build on the achievements secured in the field of urban regeneration over the past few years. With the £116 million we will put in place a number of measures which will improve the environment in our towns and cities, upgrade buildings and their surroundings, preserve our urban heritage and architecture and generally improve the quality of life for residents and tourists alike in urban areas. Under the plan, funding is also being provided for the completion of the Temple Bar cultural quarter in Dublin.

There is much evidence in parts of many of our towns and cities today of dereliction, obsolete industrial buildings, run down and boarded-up retail and residential premises. High rates of unemployment and welfare dependency are common also. There are crime and security problems. As the physical environment of inner urban areas decays, the potential of the areas to attract private investment and development is also reduced.

One of the most visible achievements of Government over the last few years has been the outstanding success of its urban renewal programme. The success of the scheme to date and its very visible achievements are proof that, with a little imagination and targeted investment, run down areas can be transformed once again into thriving communities. The success of the urban renewal scheme can be measured in the fact that private sector investment generated by the scheme is in excess of £1 billion between projects completed, in progress or in planning, all this, in areas previously shunned by the private sector; that is not a bad achievement.

This level of investment has generated a substantial number of construction jobs and, most importantly, a significant number of long-term jobs. It is clear that, without the incentives offered under the urban renewal scheme, the vast majority of these projects would not have gone ahead and the problems in these areas would have worsened.

Many Members will be aware that, after several extensions to the closing date the present urban renewal scheme, is due to expire on 31 July, 1994. My Department is currently examining all aspects of urban renewal with a view to bringing forward new proposals.

The urban renewal proposals of the plan can be divided into two sub-programmes, the first involving a general scheme of urban improvement measures to be carried out in a number of towns and cities and the second relating specifically to the Temple Bar area in Dublin.

The first and largest strand of the programme relating to the urban improvement measures will be operated through relevant local authorities who will provide matching funding. Proposals to obtain matching funding from other sources will also be pursued. Under these measures, grant aid will be made available through the local authorities to finance suitable projects. The grant will be supplemented by contributions from the local authorities own resources and, in some cases, by contributions from private developers. By priming the areas concerned projects undertaken under the programme will provide the impetus necessary to promote self-sustaining development and economic regeneration. These works will involve urban landscaping, development of riverside potential of towns and cities, pedestrianisation, eradication of derelict sites, decorative paving, street lighting and street furniture.

The projects which will be assisted under this measure will be selected having regard to the following factors: the potential of the proposed works to encourage private sector investment and create jobs in target areas, the need for works in particular areas having regard to the visual appearance and general environmental condition of these areas and the capacity of proposed works to complement either existing or proposed private sector developments, so as to promote spin off development and lead to sustainable regeneration of run-down areas.

The architectural heritage of our larger urban centres has suffered considerable damage over the years from neglect, insensitive development, site accumulation and, in some cases, from roads schemes developed without proper rehabilitation of streetscapes. Throughout our cities many significant landmark buildings are in need of restoration, listed buildings are in need of repair and the upper floors of many commercial and retail outlets lie vacant and unused. There is need to encourage the use of these upper floors — the "living over the shop" concept. Under the programme a number of new initiatives will be implemented to tackle these problems including demonstration projects, pilot schemes and the establishment of revolving funds for public and private bodies to carry out appropriate works.

Of the £116 million urban renewal provision in the plan, £82 million has been set aside for these general improvement works. I am confident that this investment will create a significant impact and, along with private sector spin-off development which will arise, will create jobs and uplift the socio-economic life of the areas concerned.

The second strand of the programme will be implemented against the background of the special arrangements which have been put in place for the redevelopment of the Temple Bar area of Dublin. The total cost of the cultural programme planned for the Temple Bar area is £37.5 million, £3.5 million of this has already been used on construction. The balance of expenditure of £334 million needed to complete the cultural programme will be met by £19.5 million from Structural Funds and £14.5 million from a direct Exchequer contribution.

The major cultural projects which will be financed under the programme are: Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Music Centre, Multi-media Centre, Children's Cultural Centre, Centre for Photography, Craft Building, Theatre Complex, Independent Artists Studios, Blackchurch Print Studios, Viking Museum, and Irish Film Centre.

All of these developments will make an important contribution to this unique area of Dublin and will ensure that the area becomes a major attraction for Dubliners and tourists alike.

I commend the plan to the House.

Mr. S. Kenny

I welcome this opportunity to voice a backbench perspective of the National Development Plan. This plan bestows on our country a unique opportunity to develop in the truest, broadest sense of the word. Over the lifetime of the plan, between 1994 and 1999, the combination of public and private investment will total an estimated £20 billion.

One fundamental belief is central to the National Development Plan published on Monday last which is that if we in Ireland work together — and when I say "we" I mean the social partners, politicians at all levels and the electorate — we can achieve much in improving the living standards and welfare of our people.

Put very bluntly, this plan is about jobs; that is the bottom line. I would be critical of anybody who suggested that it would benefit the country only between now and 1997, which would be a very short-sighted view. I contend the implementation of this plan will bring rewards to this country right into the next millennium; its proposals are about future generations, our children's and grandchildren's.

I believe the Government has achieved the right funding mix in the plan between the various regions and sectors nationwide. For example, in excess of £3 billion will be invested in people, now referred to by economists as "human resources". Through this investment we shall be able to increase the skills levels of our people which, in turn will increase the country's competitiveness and our ability to attract additional investment on the part of indigenous and international companies.

As a former public transport employee I welcome the substantial renewal and development programme for the mainline railways at a total cost of £275 million, involving the provision of modern rolling stock, track renewal and new signalling systems on those mainlines forming part of the Trans-European Rail Networks, for example, the Belfast to Dublin to Cork, the Dublin to Limerick, Tralee, Galway, Waterford and Sligo and on other rail links.

As a Dublin Deputy I am delighted to welcome the announcement by the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Deputy Stagg, of the urban renewal projects for Dublin, the completion of the Temple Bar gallery and studios and of the other cultural projects in that area. I also welcome the investment of over £330 million on the implementation of the Dublin Transportation Initiative. The House may recall that, in the course of the 1991 local elections campaign, the slogan of the Party in Dublin was "Let's Make Dublin a City that Works". With the significant funding allocated to Dublin under the provisions of this plan I believe that aim can be realised. Dublin's roads and public transport system will be upgraded in an attack on the traffic chaos which at times strangles this city.

There are specific improvements to Dublin's public transport outlined in the plan. For example, I am pleased to note that the recommendations of the Dublin Transportation Initiative, of which I am a local authority committee member, have been taken on board and that there is to be investment in the traffic management system. The improvements planned include: the provision of ten quality bus corridors to speed up bus services in the capital, the introduction of an integrated ticketing and other support measures; the completion of the Dublin ring road, providing a complete western by-pass of the city; £36 million will be spent on improving the management of the transport system with better signposting and road-markings, improved facilities for cyclists and pedestrians along with traffic calming measures in the city centre and residential areas. In addition, there will be a wide range of measures to assist mobility-impaired and disabled people. When these measures have been implemented we shall begin to witness the transformation of our capital city. It is time to get dense traffic out of the city and allow the city to breathe again, an aspiration which is achievable through the right mix of public and private transport.

One element of the plan which I believe will catch the imagination is the concept of community initiatives. Many people nationwide, in both urban and rural areas, have been neglected, if not excluded, for many years past. The proposals in this plan will bring people back in from the edges and margins of society. However, that is not to maintain that the plan will be a cure-all. Nonetheless it will afford many people a second chance.

Éamon Ó Cuív

I am very pleased to be afforded an opportunity to speak on this National Development Plan, which is job-orientated. Of course, it must be said that a national development plan whose objectives were directed solely at jobs in an isolated manner would not address the multitude of issues and problems facing ordinary people. For example, a national development plan that ignored improving the living standards of everybody, whether employed or unemployed, would not amount to much.

I contend the right balance has been struck in this plan. In the course of my constituency work I note common themes running through meetings attended by groups of people, some of whom may be on pension, some working and yet others unemployed. Always the common cry is that they need roads, water, sanitary services and so on. Therefore, any national development plan, to be a truly national one, would have to address all of those issues. It is my belief that, in addressing those issues, one would be addressing also overall job creation.

It was my view that the last plan was regionally imbalanced.

Everybody thinks about regional imbalance in rather simplistic terms of country people trying to get at Dublin people. As a Dublin person who lives in the country I see it in much more complicated terms. Recently I have been working on a detailed survey of population shifts and increasingly I come to the conclusion that one of the biggest drags on our economy has been the shift of population within and to regions. For example, in some areas within a 20 mile distance of each other there has been a 90 per cent increase in population in the past 20 years while in other areas ten or 15 miles away the population has decreased by 25 per cent. The population shift means that schools are closed in one area while new schools have to be built in other areas. Services are being run down in one area while they have to be set up in other areas. Therefore, a regionally balanced plan was absolutely necessary. It was not a question of giving a few big projects to the east and a few others to the west and saying that was regional balance. Anybody who has studied the demographic trends will know that many of the problems of our cities are caused by the magnet effect around those cities. In fact, cities such as Limerick, Cork, Galway and Dublin are like jellies that are beginning to melt and spread out. In spreading out they are sucking all the life from those areas about 35 miles beyond the city. My survey showed an extraordinary result — that the middle area of Connemara had suffered the greatest population loss. In the most distant areas, within the 25 year period relative to the survey, the decline has been halted and population stability maintained. That indicates that rural areas can develop but they can only do so when they are in a position to develop of their own accord and for that they need basic services.

Having spent 20 years in the area of the creation of industry I am aware that one of the problems is lack of infrastructure. Having been involved in the setting up of a timber mill, of fish factories and industries of various kinds, I know the problems rural industrialists face. Let us be honest, most of our basic indigenous industries—fish, forestry and food industries—originate in rural areas. On the infrastructural side, there were many problems involved in setting up an industry. There might be no telephone service, electricity supply, water supply or road network. We in the west were coming to the conclusion that it would be quicker to get your truck from Galway City to Dublin than from Rossaveel to Galway or from Cornamona to Galway. That was ludricious because these were the growth centres in which some of our industries originated. This resulted in everybody being drawn into the growth centres—a policy I am totally opposed to both on social and on economic grounds. In this plan that problem had been addressed in that a substantial sum of money is now available for regional roads serving such industries as tourism, aquaculture, forestry, fishing and agriculture. I am particularly pleased that specific mention has been made of the road from Galway to Clifden which must be the worst national secondary road in Ireland.

Mr. Durkan

We have a couple of contenders for that title.

Éamon Ó Cuív

Some of the best roads in the country are in the Deputy's constituency where there are more motorways per square acre than we will ever have.

I welcome the emphasis in the plan on marine issues. I welcome, too, the provision of finance for aquaculture and for small harbour development. In my constituency there is a large number of inshore fishermen and coastal erosion is a huge problem both on the islands and on the mainland in Galway.

I welcome the provision in respect of water, especially the specific undertaking to support water-using industries and smaller projects in the context of local and rural development. That balance which was lacking in the previous plan is provided in this one.

In regard to communications, in an area where the crank handle telephone was in use up to six years ago, the commitment of the Taoiseach to the extension of the mobile service to the rural areas is very important as we do not want to lose the ground gained. The mobile service for those in rural areas is much more important, relatively speaking, than for those in the urban areas, because the time spent in cars is much greater for those operating out of rural areas.

I am also pleased with the commitment in the plan to the extension of computerisation to rural post offices. As somebody who had fought that battle and who had said there should be growth centres in the villages for services, in order that people would not have to go to Galway or Dublin, I welcome that particular commitment. It is not just a matter of giving a computer to a post office and providing the existing range of services. The provision of computers to rural post offices opens the way in the long term to providing a whole range of community services such as car taxation, social welfare information etc. I am glad we are at last beginning to realise that we must bring the services to the people, not the people to the services. Overall this is a good plan. There is much more I could say about it including its commitment to the Gaeltacht areas and to agriculture.

Tá súil agamsa leis an bplean seo go n-eireódh linn dhá rud a dhéanamh. Caithfear an bheatha sa bhfíor-shaoil, ní díreach ceist arigid, ach beatha gach aon duine sa phobal a fheabhsú, seirbhísí níos fearr a thabhairt do na daoine, obair a chur ar fáil — sin bun-rud go gcaithfear a dhéanamh. Ach ar ndóigh ní chuirfear obair ar fáil muna ndéanfaimid leasú ar an gcóras cánach agus ar an gcóras leasa shóisialaigh freisin. Mar sin níl anseo ach cuid den phacáiste iomlán a bhaineann le cúrsaí fostaíochta.

Caithfimíd freisin ó thaobh na hoibre de bealach a aimsiú chun a chinntiú go mbeidh bealach ag daoine beaga — daoine atá ag tosú — le airgead a fháil le cur leis an airgead a bheidh ar fáil ón Stáit, chun go mbeidh seans ag gach duine, má tá smaoineamh fiúntach acu, tarraingt ar an airgead seo.

Molaim an plean seo. Tá mé ag súil nuair a thiocfaidh na mion-phleananna amach—na sub-programmes mar a thugann siad orthu — go mbeidh deis ag leithéidí na gComhairlí Contae a rá cad iad na rudaí a theastaíonn, go mbeidh an solúbthacht seo ann. Bhí daoine ag rá go raibh díomá orthu nach raibh chuile cineál ruda a bheadh sa phlean idir seo agus 1999 luaite. Caithfidh mise a rá go mb'fhearr liom é mar atá sé. Mar de réir mar a imíonn an aimsir athraíonn an saol. Mar sin tá áthas ormsa go mbeidh deis anois faoi na cláracha éagsúla oibre ag na pobail agus ag na comhairlí contae moltaí a chur isteach de réir a chéile ag brú tionscnaimh chun tosaigh agus go mbeidh deis acu a chinntiú go ndíreofar ar na rudaí atá ag teastáil ó na daoine. Mar ag deireadh an lae is don phobal an plean seo. Is do phobal uilig na hÉireann é agus caithfimid a chinntiú gur mar sin a bheidh.

Ag deireadh thiar thall tá rud eile sa phlean seo gur mhaith liom an-mholadh a thabhairt dó. Is é sin go bhfuiltear sa phlean tar éis dul i gcomhairle leis na húdaráis ó thuaidh. Le fada an lá tá mise ag rá gur ceann de na bealaigh go bhféadfaí deireadh a chur le chríochdheighilt sa tír seo ná comhoibriú breise a chur ar bun ó thaobh na heacnamaíochta agus infrastruchtúir de idir tuaisceart na tíre seo agus an deisceart. Tá áthas orm go bhfuil sin beartaithe leis an bplean seo, go bhfuil pleananna cuimsitheacha le cur ar aghaidh le cheile don oileán ar fad, agus nach mbeidh an seafóid a bhíodh ann cúpla bliain ó shin, go raibh bóithre áirithe ann nach raibh ag dul go dtí an teorainn nó trasna na teorann mar nach rabhthas in ann teacht ar réiteach idir an dá thaobh san oileán seo. Níl aon cheist ar domhan nach bhfuil an chríochdheighilt sa tír seo taréis an eacnamaíocht a chur ar chúl go mór agus a thúisce a chuirimid deireadh leis ó thaobh na heacnamaíochta de is túisce a thiocfaidh muintir na hÉireann uilig chun tosaigh ó thaobh na fostaíochta de agus ó thaobh an chaighdeán maireachtála de. Mar sin molaim an plean agus creidim go bhfuil bunús maith láidir ann má thacaíonn an pobal le dul chun cinn cuimsitheach ceart a dhéanamh as seo go ceann sé bliana.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Dempsey)

As Members will observe, I have no notes so I am speaking from the heart.

Mr. E. Kenny

This is the first occasion a Minister will speak without notes on the National Development Plan and that is welcome.

Mr. Dempsey

I welcomed the National Development Plan as I believe over the next four to five years it will radically transform the country. However, I was disappointed at the criticisms levelled at it by Opposition Members. Deputy Enda Kenny who spoke earlier today criticised the National Development Plan because it was not detailed enough. He said, also, that every Fianna Fáil and Labour Deputy and councillor would know the detailed developments and make promises on them.

Mr. Durkan

They would have the pages with the details.

Acting Chairman (Ms F. Fitzgerald)

Deputy, the Minister without interruption.

Mr. Dempsey

The Opposition criticism rings hollow. The expenditure of £20 billion over the next five to six years will radically transform our economy. The infrastructural development, already outlined by Ministers during the course of this debate, will be very significant.

I will now address the role the Office of Public Works will play in that development. The Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht has initiated a policy on culture, wildlife and so on which will be implemented mainly by the Office of Public Works. Investment will be made in the following areas: the inland waterways will receive a total of £26.1 million; the national parks and nature reserves will receive £10.6 million; national monuments and historic properties will receive £28.5 million and a total of £34 million is allocated for cultural projects which will be outlined later by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.

The Office of Public Works was criticised for the way it spent money which has been made available to it. It was alleged that it embarked on building interpretative centres without planning or consultation. I take this opportunity to reject accusations that there was no preplanning of the interpretative centres, not only the controversial centres but the other visitor centres built over the past number of years and will, with the help of this money, be built in the years to come. Most of the projects had been initiated under the previous National Development Plan 1989-93 but the building programme was accelerated as money became available. The projects were not plucked out of the air on a whim. Whether the interpretative centres were to be built in the Burren, the Boyne or Dun Chaoin the plans had been on the stocks for years but could not be brought forward because of lack of money. The allocation from the previous Structural Funds enabled the Office of Public Works to go ahead with plans which had in many cases been on the stocks for up to ten to 15 years.

The total allocation to the Office of Public Works from the Exchequer and the EC will be £102 million, which will be used in the main to carry out infrastructural developments of a cultural and heritage nature. It is the policy of the Office of Public Works to ensure that there is full consultation in areas where projects are planned. Let me assure the House also that the moneys will be spent on projects throughout the regions and each region will get a fair share of the allocation. I am conscious that people who add up the pounds and pence may say in the future that one area got a larger share than another but our aim is to spread the money as evenly as possible. However, for obvious reasons areas of particular significance will get a higher allocation.

Mr. Durkan

In other words, it will be spread more evenly in some areas than in others.

Mr. Dempsey

Over the next three to four weeks there will be a regional breakdown of the total allocation and everybody will be able to see the distribution of the money. The various projects are outlined in the synopsis of the National Development Plan but a more detailed breakdown will be provided later. It will also be outlined as the operations programmes come onstream. It is the Government's aim to ensure that the resources are spread throughout the country as evenly and as effectively as possible.

In conclusion, the current programme which will end this year assisted 30 projects at various locations throughout the country under the Office of Public Works Vote. Investments were undertaken and projects such as the Céide Fields in County Mayo — about which Deputy Kenny is well aware — were initiated.

Mr. E. Kenny

At the opening of which the Minister of State made a fine speech.

Mr. Dempsey

Thank you, Deputy. Those projects included also the Coole-Garryland nature reserve in Galway, the restoration of Ross Castle in County Kerry, the restoration of the Royal Canal and the upgrading of the Grand Canal and the Barrow navigation. I assure Deputies that money will be spent in a similar fashion during the tenure of this plan.

I accept it is difficult for the Opposition to envisage how some of the plans will work during the next five years, but the public will not thank them for being negative about such a positive development for the country.

Mr. Durkan

It is not as difficult for us as it is for the Government.

Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications (Mr. Cowen)

The Taoiseach stated at the launch of the National Development Plan last Monday that the £20 billion plan represents the biggest development project ever seen in the history of this State. Our biggest challenge under this plan is the creation of more jobs. This can best be achieved by ensuring that the funds invested under the plan are used efficiently and effectively, leading not only to increased output levels and expanded productive capacity, but above all to the creation of the 200,000 jobs targeted under the plan. It is essential that we achieve the very best long term return for the economy from the plan's investments, so that sustainable jobs can be created and the long term unemployed — and those at high risk of becoming unemployed — are integrated in the mainstream of economic activity.

Our plan will not just happen, we have to commit ourselves to make it work. We have to create the conditions that will enable us to be even more competitive in domestic and overseas markets thereby achieving our job creation targets. The gross job target in the plan will translate into net non-agricultural job growth of between 70,000 and 100,000 over the period of the plan, depending of course on the level of competitiveness we can achieve and the strength of the growth in the world economy. The plan assumes that the international economy will pick up during 1994 and then expand steadily over the medium term. If that happens the economy is likely to grow at an average annual rate of upwards of 3½ per cent from 1994 to 1999. This would be below the average for the last five years but above the average projected for the EC as a whole between 1994 and 1999. Of course, a significantly stronger performance in the international economy, and sustained improvement in competitiveness, would lead to higher growth than in the central projection. Indeed, an annual average growth rate of 5 per cent to 6 per cent could be achieved.

Before discussing the sectors for which I have responsibility, I would like to commend all those organisations and individuals who made submissions in relation to the plan. Such submissions provided a valuable input to the formulation process. As the House will be aware, the preparation of the plan involved a very extensive process of consultation. That process involved not only the seven sub-regional review committees and the social partner organisations; but also a wide range of other bodies, organisations and persons throughout the country who made submissions, coupled with discussion by the Central Review Committee and by the National Economic and Social Forum.

In essence, the plan reflects the outcome of a very comprehensive consultation process, in particular the greatly increased emphasis on local economic development, which is an important feature of the plan. In addition, there was close liaison at various levels with the EC Commission, as the plan was being developed. That close liaison with the EC Commission will continue now that we have formally submitted the National Development Plan to Brussels, in so far as the plan will form the basis for negotiations with the EC Commission, which will culminate in agreement on the Community Support Framework for Ireland which will represent the Community's response to the plan and set out the agreed development priorities, the forms of assistance and the indicative financing plan.

As the House will be aware, the Community Support Framework will be implemented through a series of operational programmes which will set out in great detail the development measures to be implemented in each sector. Draft operational programmes are being prepared at present by the relevant Departments as a prelude to their submission to the Commission during the coming months. Two of the operational programmes relate to my area of responsibility, namely the transport operational programme and the operational programme for the postal, energy and telecommunications sectors — the "PET" operational programme. These programmes relate to the development of our infrastructure which is among the core elements in the Government's strategy for turning the £20 billion plan into jobs. The aim is to ensure that by investing in our infrastructure the capacity of the economy will be enhanced and its ability to compete improved, to face the sharper trading environment now emerging in the international marketplace.

I will now address, in turn, the development measures planned for the transport, energy and communications sectors. The primary objective of transport investment during the period of the plan will be to support sustainable economic development and employment creation by improving internal and access transport infrastructure and facilities on an integrated basis, thereby reducing transport costs and offsetting the negative effects of peripherality on the economy; and improving the reliability of the transport system by removing bottlenecks, remedying capacity deficiencies and reducing journey times.

These objectives will be achieved through the integrated operational programme for transport which will embrace the transport functions of three Departments, namely, strategic investments in national, primary and secondary roads, under my colleague the Minister for the Environment; selective and targeted investment in sea ports, under my colleague the Minister for the Marine; and significant public transport and airport investments, under my own Ministry.

Under this plan, the key area of public transport and airports will benefit from a considerable investment boost. First, there will be a substantial renewal and development programme for the mainline railways at a total cost of £275 million. It is envisaged that £185 million of this programme will be EC co-financed. The programme will involve the provision of modern rolling stock, track renewal and new signalling systems on those lines forming part of the trans European rail networks — Belfast-Dublin-Cork, Dublin to Limerick, Tralee, Galway, Waterford and Sligo — and on other rail links, including Dublin to Westport-Ballina and Dublin to Rosslare. In short, the national mainline rail network will be developed with particular emphasis on strategic inter-urban links and on improving the accessibility of access transport facilities at our main ports and airports.

Second, the Dublin Transportation Initiative will be substantially advanced during the period of the plan with an investment programme for over £330 million. That programme includes a proposal for EC assisted investment of £220 million which will enable substantial progress to be made on the implementation of the public transport elements of the DTI recommended strategy. This funding will include up to £200 million in expenditure in respect of light rail. There will also be investment in quality bus services and other public transport infrastructure and support measures in Dublin. In addition, there will be £36 million of co-financed expenditure on traffic management measures.

Third, investment of £143 million is planned for the State airports at Dublin. Shannon and Cork on the upgrading of existing capacity and provision of new capacity to cater for traffic growth and to maintain service, quality and safety standards. It is envisaged that £50 million of this investment will be EC co-financed. Such investment is required to ensure the provision of adequate infrastructure for the national and international aviation links required by the traded economic sectors and to meet projected increases in these requirements.

I should point out that further significant development of the regional airports is not envisaged in the short term, in view of the improvements carried out under the 1989-93 peripherality programme. However, the policy for regional airports will be directed toward increasing traffic at these airports. Accordingly, it is intended, subject to agreement with the EC, to introduce an essential air services programme for the regional airports, aimed at ensuring a minimum level of air services within Ireland to the parts of the country served by the airports.

In the energy sector a total investment programme of over £2.1 billion is planned and policy will focus on tacklling the factors which induce uncompetitive energy charges in the Irish economy, as well as minimising fuel consumption and energy infrastructure inefficiencies. It should be noted that the energy investments planned for the period 1994-99 are geographically widely dispersed, due primarily to the extent of resources required for the electricity supply network. The investments planned for peat development and energy efficiency, in particular, reflect the views received from individual sub-regional review committees.

The new investments in the energy sector will cater for increased demand from the economy in general, secure improved efficiency in energy supply and consumption and result in a more cost competitive supply infrastructure. The impact of energy use on the environment has taken on an increasing importance at national and international level in recent years. Much of the investment planned for the sector over the period 1994 to 1999 will have the effect of increasing the efficiency of existing supply technology, thereby reducing energy losses. Conservation measures will focus directly on the efficiency of energy consumption by end users in the domestic, industrial and commercial sectors.

It is proposed to provide Structural Funds aid for key projects in the energy sector. They include a peat-fired generating station, an energy efficiency scheme, investment in rural energy networks, the extension of the natural gas supply to Shannon and pilot projects in the development of cutaway bogs. As regards the proposal for a peat-fired generation station, the Government is committed to the continued use of peat for electricity generation provided that the costs are not excessive. The position at present is that Bórd na Móna has completed a feasibility study into a new peat-fired power station using the most up to date technology which will be 50 per cent more efficient, on average, than existing peat-fired stations. We will be putting forward the project for co-funding by the European Commission under the Postal Energy and Telecommunications operational programme now being prepared by my Department.

Turning to the telecommunications sector, there will be an investment of £870 million over the period of the plan. Despite very considerable investment in telecommunications over the last decade, its level of penetration in Ireland, compared with most member states, remains relatively low and the full range of modern services is still not available nationwide. I hardly need emphasise to this House the importance of telecommunications for the Irish economy. The importance is underlined by factors such as its geographic distance from the principal European markets, the relative openness of the Irish economy, which increases the importance of telecommunications for industry as a whole and the long standing industrial policy of attracting export-oriented foreign direct investment, much of which requires advanced telecommunications technology. Indeed, if telecommunications services available in Ireland fail to keep pace with developments elsewhere, this country will be disadvantaged in the context of attracting foreign investment and creating and retaining jobs. As a sector telecommunications is inherently profitable. In this context it is important to recognise that Telecom Éireann funded an accelerated investment programme during the past decade from internally generated funds and borrowings. While it was never intended that EC co-financing for telecommunications investment would be as significant as that required for investment programmes in the non-traded sector, I am pleased there will be some useful EC co-financing of certain key developments in the telecommunications sector, under the National Development Plan.

The range of investments proposed under the plan for telecommunications will facilitate the following developments, among others, the completion of digitalisation, the expansion of the fibre optical network, further developments in mobile services and significant improvements in international access.

The investments will also generate a much higher telephone penetration — from 70 telephones per 100 households to a projected 82 per 100. It is proposed to provide Structural Funds aid for certain exchange developments.

As regards postal services, An Post is currently implementing a major programme of investment in modern postal infrastructure in those areas of the company's operations where these projects are demand-led. In addition, significant improvements to the cost-effectiveness and quality of postal services at a regional level will be achieved by a number of key infrastructural investments which will include the extension of the Post Office computer system into rural areas, the extension of computerised control systems, the provision of European-standard materials-handling equipment, the construction of modern mail centres located in the regions and integrated with the national roads network.

Gross structural expenditure over the period of the plan will be £60 million. This expenditure should help to provide a service which will enhance the capacity of Irish businesses to compete in the Single European Market by improving the quality of service and by reducing operating costs. It is proposed to provide Structural Funds aid for some of the modernisation works being planned by An Post.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the importance of making the National Development Plan work. Its success will depend not merely on the £8 billion Community funds that we will attract, it will depend fundamentally on the extent to which opportunities are grasped and the challenges confronted. There is no doubt that the plan has ambitious targets — the creation of 200,000 jobs and an economic growth rate which is projected to increase faster than the Community average to the end of the decade. To achieve these targets — and the other targets in the plan — will require considerable co-operation, commitment and consensus from all sectors of the community. It is in all our interests that the objectives of the plan are achieved so that we can enter the 21st century with a robust economy, enjoying higher living standards and a much higher level of employment. The National Development Plan charts a course for such progress to be recorded over the next six years. It deserves to be strongly endorsed by this House.

Mr. Barrett

I wish to share my time with Deputy Gay Mitchell.

Acting Chairman (Ms F. Fitzgerald)

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr. Barrett

It is interesting to hear Minister after Minister trotting out the projects we will have. One would want to wish the plan well for the sake of the country. It would be negative to belittle it as most people welcome the investment of £20 billion in the economy. However, key factors are being ignored and I will concentrate on them.

Regarding the figures supplied in the plan, approximately 20 per cent of the £20 billion is dependent on investment from the private sector — £3.7 billion. Apart from the level of investment required it is more important to encourage the participation of the private sector, but the reality is that there is no incentive for investment. If people were given £200,000 to invest in this country, they would be at a loss to know where to invest it. Those who have money to invest find it more profitable and secure to leave it on deposit in the banks, post office and so on. Their money is not benefiting the economy.

We can talk forever about jobs but, unless the State picks up the slack and employs people directly, the only other possibility for job creation is in the private sector. If a project is to be successful it will depend on probably a 40 per cent investment from the private sector. The real problem is that there is no direction in regard to the economy. We do not know if the private sector should be involved or if the State should be in control. This country is now more State controlled than the former Soviet Union. Employers are faced with constant hassle in respect of various rules and regulations pertaining to PRSI, tax and so on. I read in the paper recently that there is an estimated £3 billion in the black economy. Our tax inspectors should be endeavouring to collect that £3 billion. Why are people dealing in the black economy instead of engaging in legitimate business? The reality is that they take the easy way out. The corporation tax for manufacturing industry is 10 per cent and in the service area it is 40 per cent. Employers who make a profit must pay 40 per cent corporation tax and further tax on the dividend.

In the new bank deposit accounts one gets 10 per cent tax, the money is safe and one can collect it at the end of the year without hassle, without having to worry about Revenue Commissioners, labour legislation or tax rates. We are talking as if there was £20 billion to be invested tomorrow without any problem. Unless we make it attractive for people to invest we are wasting our time talking about depending on 20 per cent investment in this plan coming from the private sector. We now have personality politics without any direction, and people will not risk investing money. If we are to depend for investment on the private sector we must make it attractive for them.

The Department of the Marine, for which I am shadow spokesperson, is another example of lack of direction. It was announced that over £300 million will be spent in the marine area over seven years. That is only 1.5 per cent of the total amount to be invested and it shows a lack of direction in terms of regional policy and the potential for jobs in marine areas, fisheries, tourism and angling and ports and harbours. We have a ridiculous policy whereby fishery harbours need investment, local authorities must pay 50 per cent of the cost of repairng harbours although they do not have any money, with the result that there is no investment and no facilities. It is extraordinary that in a sector with real potential we have seen fit to invest only 1.5 per cent of the total amount available.

To add insult to injury while we badly need investment in marine research we have only got an allocation of £9 million over seven years. We have constant debates about the disappearance of sea trout, salmon and trout from our rivers and about lice infestation but all we are prepared to do is invest £9 million in marine research over a seven year period. The allocations show a total lack of direction.

It is grand for Ministers to tell us about the projects they hope to see up and running over a period of seven years. None of us objects to building a new railway or a major road but I am talking about real investment in the economy to create lasting jobs. We must decide long term policies and not constantly take the popular line, otherwise there will be plenty of talk but no action when it comes to producing jobs. The Government cannot produce jobs unless it employs people directly, it can only create the climate from which jobs will come and it must include a friendly climate investment. The labour laws dating back to the 1970s were suitable then but that is not the case today. The day of getting a job, working for 40 years and ending up with a pension is slowly disappearing but we are pretending that it is not. Our labour legislation is crucifying job creation because people are afraid to invest and to take a risk.

Mr. G. Mitchell

I will concentrate on the Dublin region as nobody is speaking for it. Many representatives elected for Dublin do not originate from the region and sympathise more with the regions from which they came. That was all right in the past as those regions were underdeveloped but now Dublin has become an undeveloped region so their sympathies are misplaced. It is time for Deputies elected for Dublin to speak for Dublin as a region. I know there are difficulties in the regions but other Deputies are elected to represent that case. The case is not being made for Dublin, which has 29.1 per cent of the population without taking into account the populations of the towns around greater Dublin, but it has 32.6 per cent of the unemployment. In September 1993, 94,523 people were unemployed in Dublin and Dublin as a region now has the highest rate of unemployment. In previous unemployment crises it was the other way around and Dublin could afford to give a little because the unemployment rate here was traditionally lower than in the rest of the country. That is not the case now although we continue to behave as if it was.

To date Dublin has received less than a quarter of the Structural Funds although it should have received almost one third. That trend continues in this plan. Page 17 of the synopsis of the plan gives an estimated sub-regional breakdown of expenditure from 1994 to 1999 and the first region given is Dublin. Leaving aside 1993 where we are already deprived in terms of our share of the cake, it is estimated that Dublin will receive £4.29 billion of the remaining £16.66 billion. It is estimated that Dublin will get one quarter of the expenditure, included in that expenditure will be Dublin port and the Airport which are of national importance, not just of importance to the Dublin region.

Dublin as a region is not doing well out of this plan and has not done well out of plans generally. This is not the fault of the Government; the elected representatives for Dublin, including myself, have not been vociferous in making the case for Dublin. Indeed, they have been very sympathetic to the case made for other regions.

The rate of unemployment in parts of Dublin is 70 per cent. People in their mid-twenties living in Dublin Corporation flat complexes in my constituency have never worked and have no prospects of getting a job. I doubt if that is the position in any other part of the country. I have in front of me the rates of unemployment for the other regions. Almost one-third of the unemployed, 32.6 per cent, live in Dublin. I strongly believe we are not getting that point across.

It is stated in the plan that a figure of £724.2 million will be provided for transport initiatives. If we exclude the figures for the airport and Dublin port we are left with a figure of approximately £500 million for the remainder of the transport initiatives. Yet, it is suggested in the interim report of the Dublin Transportation Initiative that the figure required during this period will be £750 million. In other words, only two-thirds of the amount suggested is to be made available. The reason for this is that strong representations have been made on behalf of the other regions.

We have to get the message across that Dublin cannot keep giving. I was disposed to the idea that Government Departments should be decentralised, this was fine when Dublin had the edge over the rest of the country in terms of employment but it now lags behind. We must make the case that there is a need to create employment in Dublin.

If the plan to develop Dublin port is implemented it could become one of the most modern, if not the biggest, ports in Europe in five years. Hand in hand with this we need to secure development on the central corridor. Many years ago I argued that we should find out how much it would cost to build a tunnel between here and Wales. I did not suggest that we should build the tunnel; I suggested that we would then be in a position to go to the European Community to argue that from 1994 we will be the only member state of the European Community with no land connection to the rest of the Community and that, therefore, it should make Structural Funds available to modernise our fleet on the Irish Sea, particularly on the central corridor. I presume that some assistance has been provided for ships but there was a time when this would not have been considered. As I said, from next year this will be the only member state of the European Community with no land connection to the remainder of the Community. Therefore, we badly need to modernise our fleet. We should say to the European Community that we are not seeking the amount required to build the channel tunnel but the comparatively small amount of money required to modernise our fleet on the central corridor, to develop Dublin port and Holyhead. It is very much in our interests that that port is developed.

I would like to make one further brief point. There is a need for the State to form a partnership with voluntary organisations and the private sector. We have to say to people that neither the State — I promised someone I would raise this point in the debate — nor the private sector can do everything; there is a third force, the voluntary sector. It is time we stopped saying we are running an economy, we are running a country. Seán Lemass once said that a country which thinks of its successes in economic terms alone has lost its soul. Economists are the equivalent of linesmen in a soccer match: we are running the country, not the economy.

We should bear this point in mind and try to involve the voluntary sector as well as the private sector and the State.

Minister for Enterprise and Employment (Mr. Quinn)

The National Development Plan 1994-1999 established both the framework and the priorities for investment in this country over the next six years. Its core objectives are, first, the creation of jobs, both in the short term and over time, at a rate and at a level that would not be possible without the support of funding from the European Community, and second, to directly address the plight of those who are already marginalised, or at risk of becoming so, as a result of long term unemployment.

The plan sets out in clear, unambiguous terms the main priorities for the largest investment programme ever undertaken in this country. It involves the private and public sectors in Ireland spending more than £20 billion over the six year period — 40 per cent of which will be provided by the European Community. This will underpin the creation of some 200,000 new jobs over the period — 120,000 of which will be created in the manufacturing and internationally traded services sectors.

At the outset, this partnership Government was determined to adopt an interventionist approach to ensure that those who have become marginalised or disadvantaged in our society due to a lack of job opportunities are given the skills, confidence and support to help them play their full role in the Community. The responsibility for both these objectives has, under the Programme for Government, been vested in one new Department — the Department of Enterprise and Employment.

The net impact of the very substantial rate of job creation envisaged in the plan will depend on what happens to the existing stock of jobs. The sectoral decline in agricultural employment will, unfortunately, continue. There will also be inevitable job losses in the manufacturing and services sectors. However, the level of these losses will depend on the strength of economic growth on both domestic and overseas markets and in particular — I stress this point — on the extent to which we maintain and improve competitiveness in wages and in the other factors that determine the capacity of firms to win and sustain market-share in the markets in which they compete.

A net increase of between 70,000 and 100,000 jobs in the non-agricultural sectors of the economy is a realistic and reasonable expectation at this point. The achievement of this rate of net employment increase will not match the expected level of increase in the labour-force but would nevertheless represent considerable progress and would greatly exceed the achievements of the six year period up to the end of 1993. There will also be a significant increase in the numbers participating in training apprenticeship and work experience schemes with which I will deal in more detail later.

The overall purpose of the very substantial transfer of resources from the Community to Ireland under the Structural Funds is to help strengthen the capacity of the Irish economy to compete in the more open trading environment brought about by the measures introduced to achieve a European Single Market. The Government has produced its plan based on the best informed assumptions on global economic developments over the period. Ireland is a very exposed economy and all too subject to buffeting by external and volatile economic forces. The targets set are realistic in the current economic context. If improving economic growth rates and increasing prosperity in the European Community, and beyond it, are the order over the period, these targets may well be surpassed.

A further objective is to reduce the gap in living standards between Ireland and the richer member states of the Community, but one point must be made in this regard. The attainment of much greater economic and social cohesion throughout the European Community will be an incremental process. Its realisation will take considerable time and continuing large scale investment if greater correspondence in the wealth and standards of living of all member states is to become a reality.

Considerable progress in relation to these objectives has been achieved under the 1989-1993 Community Support Framework (CSF). The rate of economic expansion here over that period was about three times the Community average with the result that per capita output in Ireland increased from 62 per cent of the Community average in 1988 to 72 per cent in 1992. An external evaluation of the impact of the programmes put in place under the CSF carried out by the ESRI for the Commission, concluded that the investment involved represents a real rate of return of between 7 per cent and 8 per cent. These are considerable achievements by any standards.

In the case of the industry programme the analyses undertaken show that, in terms of employment output and productivity, the overall performance of Irish industry over the period 1989-1993 was considerably better than the average for either the EC or the OECD. Total investment of over £3 billion was undertaken with the aid of some £1.5 billion in public funding — 60 per cent of which was provided from Structural Funds. This investment underpinned the creation of almost 81,000 jobs in gross terms in the four years to the end of 1992 which translated into an average annual net gain in employment of almost 2,900 over that period. The net gains in the two years 1990 and 1991, at a period of strong economic growth in our export markets, came to over 11,000 jobs.

We have, therefore, shown that the allocation of substantial resources to the development of industry in Ireland under the Community Support Framework has been well spent and this is confirmed by external evaluation.

I am confident, therefore, that the considerable resources allocated to the development of industry under the National Development Plan 1994-1999 will be equally well spent.

I make this point without any sense of complacency. Our needs are great and the challenge we face in developing a strong industrial sector is a difficult one. During the 1990s this challenge will be particularly difficult for the following reasons:

First, the completion of the Community's EC Single Market will greatly increase the competition faced by Irish firms on domestic and EC markets as well as opening up opportunities for firms that can meet the increased competitive challenge.

Second, the "democratisation" of Eastern Europe and Asian economies will increase competition from low-cost, increasingly efficient and innovative new market economies across all markets in which Irish firms compete.

Third, a successful GATT agreement will increase the opportunities for trade for Irish firms but the level of competition will also increase, especially for sectors which enjoyed a certain measure of protection in the past — for example, in certain segments of the clothing and the food industries.

Fourth, there will be an increase in the number of countries — many of which provide a lower cost base than Ireland — suitable for, and seeking a share of, internationally mobile investment.

Fifth, it is also the case that the incentives which Ireland offers internationally mobile investment are increasingly being matched, and exceeded in some cases, by other countries. For example, corporation tax rates have fallen internationally making Ireland's 10 per cent CT rate relatively less attractive. EC studies show that state aids to industry in the richer Community countries have increased in size and represent, by far, the bulk, of state aids offered to industry in the EC.

The approach to the development of the industrial sector set out in the National Plan is very much in line with the advice given to Government in the Culliton report and the approach adopted for the implementation of the Culliton report recommendations by the Moriarty Task Force. The Government's broad endorsement of the recommendations in these reports, was set out earlier this year in the publication Employment Through Enterprise.

Under the National Development Plan, over the period 1994-1999 more than £1.7 billion will be spent on industrial promotion which will support an additional private sector expenditure of some £2.2 billion. The underlying approach is that money should not simply be given freely for industrial promotion purposes: value for money and selective interventions are the key elements.

There is a significant increase under the plan in the direct allocation of funds for the development of indigenous industry: from £34 million in 1993 to £44 million in 1994 to £55 million in 1999 — a total of more than £290 million over the six year period. In addition, a major new programme for the development of the food industry — which is the most important single sector of indigenous industry — will be put in place involving a total expenditure of £305 million over the period. This will include expenditure on science and technology and marketing measures as well as on the conventional grant incentives for the food industry.

Over £800 million will be spent on other measures which will focus mainly on the development of indigenous industry over the period in the areas of research and development, marketing industry development in the Gaeltacht areas, on land and buildings for industrial purposes and on employment and management training grants.

The primary focus of strategy will be on improving the competitiveness of Irish-owned industry with a view to achieving an increased share of international and domestic markets, thereby providing a platform for sustainable employment growth.

Irish companies have a considerable gap to bridge before they can compete successfully on a long term basis with international firms on both domestic and export markets. Unlike the generality of internationally mobile firms attracted to Ireland, indigenous firms tend to have development needs in areas of marketing technology, skills and finance for expansion and marketing which represent an obstacle to their development and the expansion of trade.

The new agency for the development of indigenous industry, Forbairt, will have a crucial role in revitalising Irish industry. Forbairt and An Bord Tráchtála have complementary roles and will work closely together at local, national and international levels. The aim is to achieve qualitative improvements and increased competitiveness in indigenously managed firms which will be reflected in an increase in indigenous exports from £3.7 billion in 1992 to £6.8 billion in 1999 in today's prices; a doubling of the number of indigenous manufacturing firms with a turnover in Ireland in excess of £100 million, from 16 in 1989 to 32 in 1999; and the creation of 11,000 gross jobs per annum on average.

Targets assume a continued improvement in Ireland's overall competitiveness across all facets of the economy and based on current economic forecasts, it is likely that they will only be achieved with difficulty.

The ability to find solutions to the economic challenges ahead depends on a society which is trained and literate in science and technology. Irish industry relies on an educated workforce to maintain ever improving standards and to compete at international level in new developments and innovative research. Firms which utilise appropriate technology and which possess and exploit special skills are well positioned to generate sustainable economic growth.

Although Ireland has been successful in applying for research and development grants under EC Framework Programmes and our third level institutions have been successful in attracting more research, the fact remains, that in an international context, the level of expenditure on research and development in Ireland is still comparatively very low.

Because we are convinced of the pivotal role which science and technology play in modern society, their potential contribution to industrial development, the need for industry to constantly upgrade and innovate and the large amount of State resources already committed to these activities, the Government has agreed to a full scale review of science and technology, details of which will be announced in the near future.

Under the plan a sum of £114 million over six years is proposed for county enterprise boards which are a significant new element in the strategy for indigenous industry. The 36 boards will support start-up and existing business projects in all sectors including, for the first time, the services sector with the exception of those manufacturing projects which exceed a threshold of ten persons in terms of employment potential. These will be reserved to Forbairt.

The county enterprise boards should be an ideal rallying point for those individuals, companies and organisations at local level to focus their ideas and energies, and to receive real support and direction. The talent is there, all that is needed is the spark from us to ignite it.

Taking account of the high rate of unemployment, Ireland has little choice but to continue to pursue a substantial inward investment programme. The focus of strategy for the promotion of inward investment will be to concentrate on the sector and market niches in which Ireland has the greatest competitive advantage. The establishment of a separate dedicated agency — IDA Ireland — to promote inward investment will ensure this concentrated effort.

A second pillar of the approach to maximising the benefits of inward investment will be to seek to achieve an increased level of linkages between indigenous and foreign-owned firms. The role for Forfás in co-ordinating the work of the different agencies will be vital in ensuring this takes place.

The target is to create 9,000 gross jobs per annum on average through inward direct investment and by the expansion and development of foreign-owned firms already located in Ireland.

Expenditure on the totality of industry-related measures will generate a gross total of 120,000 jobs directly over the period of the plan. The outturn in terms of the net change in employment in the manufacturing sector will depend crucially on developments in the markets in which Irish firms compete. If there is a return to the relatively buoyant conditions which prevailed in these markets before the present slow-down which has persisted for the past three years there are good prospects for achieving a significant net increase in employment in the manufacturing and internationally traded services sectors over the plan period of up to 5,000 jobs in particular years. This will require that the competitiveness of these sectors is maintained and improved through modest increases in income levels and through the effective implementation of those recommendations of the Culliton Group which seek to improve the overall competitiveness of the economy and which have been endorsed by the Government in the publication Employment through Enterprise.

A considerable level of resources will go into building up the managment, marketing and technological capacity of Irish industry over the plan period. Much of this expenditure will not give an immediate return in terms of employment increases, but it will help to maintain existing employment, to reduce job losses and to provide the foundation for the future job increases based on the increased competitiveness — in the widest sense — of the firms supported.

Under the Maastricht Treaty a vision was created of a prosperous Europe where all citizens could lead lives which reflect the fullest achievement of their individual potential. The most significant impediment that now fundamentally undermines that vision of prosperity and individual self-fulfilment is the high level of unemployment prevalent throughout Europe.

In recognition of this the Structural Funds' budget of the Community has been significantly increased to assist in improving economic performance, impact on unemployment levels and reduce the disparities in the living standards of Community citizens. These are worthy objectives and our National Development Plan has been inspired by a determination to make our national contribution towards achieving them.

My Department is the national authority for the European Social Fund. That fund will be the source of financial support in assisting the Government to provide a balanced range of education, training and employment programmes. These address training for specific skills required in the industrial and services sectors, training for those at work and programmes to enhance the employment prospects of the unemployed. Total investment in these programmes over the six year period will be of the order of £4 billion.

The Government recognises that the fullest development of the skills and aptitudes of people entering the labour market, as well as those in employment or seeking work, is fundamental to the achievement of the economic and social objectives of the plan.

Our growth and economic prosperity will be essentially determined by success in increased productivity levels and by the contribution which a highly educated and skilled workforce can make towards that development. Accordingly, the education, training and employment schemes included in the plan address the needs of industry and the services sector for well trained personnel. They also recognise the obligation of Government to intervene to ensure that the marginalised and disadvantaged have equal opportunity and access to education and vocational training. This category of people will be fully supported in their efforts to obtain worthwhile work and benefit from the status which that work will confer.

In recent times commentators on the Irish labour market have become increasingly preoccupied with the "skills gap" issue. Skill deficiencies adversely affect efforts to achieve higher productivity levels, increase competitiveness, improve economic performance and reduce the level of unemployment. Individual employers clearly have a central role to play in this respect and increased interest and investment on their part in the training of their workers is essential if individual firms are to grow and position themselves to recruit additional workers.

Equally, our public training and education programmes must impart skills and aptitudes which are on a par with the highest international standards, and formally certified as being so. New procedures which will be put in place to provide for recognised certification of vocational education and training programmes should mark a real advance in efforts to eliminate the skills gap. The involvement of international experts in the setting of certification standards to be achieved and in determining the training content of programmes must be a central and indispensable aspect of these new certification procedures.

Like my colleagues, I listened to the contributions made by Opposition spokespersons from the various parties. While we welcome in many respects their endorsement of the plan, we understand some of their concerns. This plan is part of an overall Government strategy and not the last word from this point of view. It is part of our response to the needs of society. The Programme for Government, which both parties in Government signed and which this House endorsed, will complement the efforts which will result from spending £2 billion over the period of this plan.

I assure the House and the Deputy opposite that this Administration, with the support of the House and the social partners, intends to implement this spending plan in conjunction with the EC to ensure that we get the most effective return for that money. As a consequence of that efficient and effective spending, this country will be immediately transformed to the benefit of all at the end of the duration of the plan. We welcome the support and co-operation of the social partners in setting out to achieve that objective. I commend the plan to the House.

The Dáil adjourned at 4 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 19 October 1993.