Vol. 510 No. 6
32 Mr. Dukes asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government if strategic considerations in relation to settlement patterns have been taken into account in planning major road, water supply and water treatment projects in the preparation of the national development plan. [23453/99]
While existing and future settlement patterns were an important factor in framing the investment programmes in the areas of roads and water infrastructure under the national development plan, the Government's policies under the plan go much further than that. It is a fundamental aim of the plan to achieve more geographically balanced economic progress and regional development, through a concerted effort to spread development more evenly throughout the regions, ease the pressure in the greater Dublin area, tackle urban and rural poverty and promote closer integration of physical and economic planning than has ever been the case previously. Investment in roads and water services projects will take full account of regional development policy as well as existing needs.
As far as major investment in roads is concerned, settlement patterns as a major determinant of traffic flows and volumes, are a significant influence on road development needs and are, accordingly, reflected in the road development strategy outlined in the plan. More specifically, the strategic planning guidelines for the greater Dublin area were taken into account in the preparation of the national development plan. Settlement patterns are also taken into account in the planning and design of individual road development schemes.
With regard to water and waste water projects, the investment predicated in the national development plan is based on our obligations under EU Directives, assessments of needs supplied by the local authorities, discussions with the IDA, and other economic forecasts and projections. Local authority assessments, initiated in October 1998, were required to have regard to the provisions of development plans and any relevant strategic regional planning guidelines.
The Government has also mandated my Department to prepare a national spatial strategy which will translate the overall approach to regional development set out in the national development plan into a more detailed blueprint for spatial development in Ireland over the period up to the year 2020.
Additional Information
This strategy will take two years to prepare, will identify spatial development patterns and will set down indicative proposals for the location of industrial, commercial and residential development, rural development, tourism, culture and heritage, including the necessary infrastructure to support these proposals. Investment in infrastructure cannot await the completion of the spatial strategy. The enhanced level of investment in roads and water services provided for under the NDP will commence immediately on the basis of the priorities I have already outlined.
I do not know whether to be sorry for the Minister or to admire his neck. He has given an answer which says, yes, we have a strategy and then it goes on to say the Government has told him to develop the strategy. Is the Minister aware that everything he said is turned into a nonsense given that the Government said yesterday that at the mid point of the national development plan it will have to have a spatial strategy, thereby admitting there is no spatial strategy? Will he accept that all the first part of his reply was just flannel and that all we have in the national development plan is simply a continuation of existing projects and the hope that as much money as possible will be thrown at them in the early years of the plan without any overall strategy? Will the Minister say why it will take two years or two and a half years to develop a spatial strategy?
It will take two years because this Government, which had consultations on the national development plan, strongly believes in the process of consultation with the various bodies which have an interest in this issue—
Rubbish. What has the Minister been doing for the past two and half years?
—and have done some work in the area of regional planning and so on. The specific question the Deputy asked was if strategic considerations in relation to settlement patterns have been taken into account. The shortened version of the answer is "yes"—
The Minister has just said—
We all know where the houses and the towns are. It does not take a study to decide that. On the specific programmes he mentioned – the road investment programme and the water services investment programme – settlement patterns are important in deciding where those works go. There are other considerations that have to be taken into account as well, for example, in the whole area of the water services investment, we have legal obligations in relation to EU directives and so on. That had to be a consideration in the provision of water and waste water services. The document mentioned earlier, the National Roads Needs Study, was also used in forming the national development plan. In the coming two years a fully fledged national spatial strategy will be put in place following consultation with the various organisations which have a direct interest and input.
Is the Minister going to pretend consultation was going on up to less than a year ago when the Government finally decided, having got it badly wrong, on the two principal planning regions? Is he trying to pretend that strategic consultation was going on before those regions were set up? Will he not simply admit the current plan is an ad hoc collection of projects and that there will not be any strategy behind the plan for another two years?
If the Deputy reads the plan, looks at the coverage and the welcome given to plan—
They could not even get the colours right on the map.
—by everybody except Fine Gael and Labour.
The time for dealing with this question has expired.
They could not even get the colour of the roads right on the map.
There is a considerable amount of detail in it and the big advantage in it is that it is not a wish list like the Fine Gael document that had no costings at all.
