Vol. 531 No. 2
3 Ms O. Mitchell asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government when the national spatial plan will be prepared; and when it will be possible to start directing infrastructural investment to designated growth centres. [5199/01]
The national spatial strategy is currently being prepared in my Department under the national development plan.
Following an initial round of public consultation last year, my Department completed and published a report on the scope of the strategy, setting out the issues and challenges it needed to address and a work programme to ensure its delivery by the end of this year. This was followed by a period of extensive research during which a wide range of issues, relating inter alia to population and labour force projections, the future role of Dublin in Ireland and Europe, urban and rural functioning, factors driving the location of enterprise, quality of life issues, infrastructure and environmental protection, were analysed and assessed.
Based on that information, my Department is preparing a series of policy option papers setting out the most realistic choices and opportunities open to us to promote new patterns of development in Ireland over the next 20 years. The policy papers will be published during the first half of May. Their publication will be followed over the rest of May and June by an intense period of consultation with regional and local interests, the social partners, sustainable development partners and other representative groups. Following that, and taking account of the responses and views received during the consultation phase, the proposals for inclusion in the strategy itself will be further developed, with a view to having the strategy submitted to the Government for approval in late autumn and published by the end of the year.
The strategy is not simply about picking specific centres and directing infrastructural investment to them. Its overall objectives are to promote balanced regional development, while improving the quality of life, maintaining and enhancing the quality of our natural and cultural heritage and sustaining economic development. Of particular importance, therefore, among the many issues which the strategy must address are: the future role of Dublin as a European capital city region; ensuring that the region grows in a way which is in greater equilibrium with other regions; inter-relationships between urban areas of different sizes and rural areas; spatial implications of future structural changes in agriculture; ways in which the potential within different regions can be developed; proposals for improved North-South co-ordination and co-operation on regional development and spatial planning issues; mechanisms for better integration of different sectoral policies; the role of energy and technology; urban growth patterns and the need for special policies on coastal zones and other high amenity areas.
While designated gateways and infrastructural issues will be important elements within the strategy, it will be clear from the issues I have mentioned that they will only be part of the response to a wide range of challenges.
Does the Minister agree it is a bit daft to draw up a national development plan to invest billions of pounds throughout the country and, after that investment has begun to flow, to begin an examination of where the investment should have been made? It is easy to envisage a situation where much of what is happening under the NDP will prove to be inappropriate investment when the spatial plan is available or at least not consistent with the objectives of the plan. I appreciate that the spatial plan involves more than identifying the major centres but we need not know the future of every hamlet in Ireland to establish the major centres so we can direct the major infrastructural changes towards those areas now.
It is not as daft to take the route chosen by the Government as it is to issue policy documents selecting towns or cities and discussing spatial planning around them. The open consultative approach we are adopting to the national spatial strategy, which, after all, will have profound effects on this country over the next 20 to 40 years, is the proper way to proceed. Much of the research for the national development plan is being fed into the national spatial strategy. I do not anticipate, as the Deputy appears to, that the national spatial strategy will be in conflict with the national development plan. However, there is provision in the national development plan for a review of the plan. The national spatial strategy will be available at the end of this year and the review takes place in 2003. If there are any surprises or if major changes are required in the national development plan as a result of the national spatial strategy, we will be able to accommodate them at that time.
Time is of the essence. Achieving the objectives of a spatial plan in a free enterprise economy depends on strong economic growth and on population growth. The indications are that the economy is peaking. Is there not a danger that unless the spatial plan is implemented immediately or that we at least have some idea of where we are going, it will remain aspirational for years until we again have another cycle of economic growth? The Minister will be aware of what happened in the case of Dublin. Three new towns were planned but it took 30 years for the necessary investment to follow the population. That is what will happen to regional balance.
There is a greater danger of making a mess of it if we rush into a half-baked plan and just select four or five potential cities. The Government is adopting the correct approach to the issue.
