Critical infrastructure gaps in this country are probably the worst legacy of the Government over the last number of years. This country is really poorly served by infrastructure. The Government's friends in the IMF say that Ireland lags by 32% behind our peers in terms of infrastructure delivery. The biggest cost on society is the fact that this Government cannot deliver infrastructure. For ten years after the crash, the Government spending was second-last from the bottom in terms of infrastructure. Only Romania spent less on infrastructural development than this country. Therefore, there was massive capital depreciation in Ireland as a result of the lack of investment by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. All of that has had enormous human consequences. The national children's hospital, promised by Leo Varadkar by 2020 save an asteroid hitting the planet and to be delivered for €700 million, is still not open and has been delayed for the 18th time by the Government. A total of €300 million has been spent on metro north and not a shovel has been put in the ground as of yet. It is 20 years in the making. The Navan to Dublin rail line was promised in 1994 by the Minister's colleague, Noel Dempsey, and it will not be built any earlier than 2036. People will have started work when that project was announced and they will have retired before that project will be delivered. The damage the Government is doing to people's lives is an absolute disgrace. The lack of infrastructural development in this country is tearing at the very fabric of communities and lives. I will give an example of this in the Navan to Dublin rail line. Right now it is taking between two and three hours for people to get to and from work. I was listening to all the debates about the blockages of roads and how long it was taking for people to get around the country. I was just thinking people should just travel from Navan to Dublin for work every day and they would know exactly what it means to not be able to get to work on time. This means children are growing up with anxiety at the moment because they do not see their parents from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Their parents only have about 20 minutes to half an hour to put their children to bed every night. Football clubs are going without volunteers because there is simply nobody around in the evenings to be able to train their kids because of these difficulties. The lack of infrastructure has had an enormous impact on the human fabric and the community fabric right through Ireland. It was interesting that the day it was announced the national children's hospital was going to be delayed for the 18th time was the day the Government decided it was not going to have any pre-legislative scrutiny on this particular Bill. We had the enormous catastrophe that is the national children's hospital, an example of the Government getting everything wrong, and then the Government announcing a Bill and saying, "No, we don't need to actually to do pre-legislative scrutiny on this; it is not necessary." I do not know whether it is incompetence or laziness from the Government's perspective but that is what happened. It is interesting that at that moment in time the Minister for Health was asked when the hospital would open and she said the opening date is in the hands of BAM. The Minister is getting €200,000 a year in wages and she is not in control of the biggest infrastructure project delivery in Ireland. That is startling. I have read through this Bill. I do not see anything in this Bill at the moment that would speed up the national children's hospital. There is nothing in the Bill, when a project is in situ, that would actually make it happen faster. The other thing I was struck by when I read this Bill was that it looks like an Opposition party's Bill, which has no capacity to draft a Bill and put detail in it. All the Opposition parties, every now and again, introduce a Bill to generate a debate on an issue. They know it is never going to be good enough because they do not have the ability to do it. This looks exactly the same. I am amazed by how light it is, by the lack of detail and the lack of elements in it. If we cut to the key element of the Bill, it will prioritise some projects over others. This Bill will raise some projects up the queue, which will mean other projects will go down the queue. There is no net development. If we look at what is happening at the moment and the real problems - and the Minister knows this too - we have the slowest planning processing, the slowest permitting, the slowest licensing, the slowest tendering and the slowest procurement in the EU, and judicial reviews are among the slowest and most held in this State. Nothing in the Bill that changes that. There is marginal stuff about judicial review. It could be said that the climate Act change could affect some judicial reviews, but there is nothing in this Bill that, outside of that, will change the speed of that process. There is no net change in the speed of progress in the delivery of all those aspects. There are issues about co-operation and issues about different Departments. I welcome that and it is probably a good thing that is actually on a statutory legal level. I admit that, but there is no penalty if it does not happen. If the Minister tells a Department that it has to co-operate and do X,Y and Z in terms of co-ordination and it does not do it, what happens in that scenario? All of those issues are really departmental management issues anyway. There is nothing stopping a Minister in a Department addressing the elements of the planning process in more co-ordinated fashion, making sure that, for example, a planning application does not need to have 30,000 pages and does not need a van to bring it to the local authority or saying we do not need four different versions of the planning application and that we need one version of the planning application that is suitable for all the different agencies that are necessary for it to go through. There is no net capacity being put into this system in relation to this. What extra resources are going to be added? An Coimisiún Pleanála officials came before the committee and said they did not have enough staff to do the job they have to do. They did say that and the Minister should not shake his head. I was sitting in front of them in that committee. They have delays still on the applications going through. I know of builders who are waiting 20 months for their application to go through. Why? Because it is not a priority application and therefore it is not getting through. Uisce Éireann officials were in front of the infrastructure committee a little while ago. I asked them how long it is going to take Uisce Éireann to fill the gaps in the water infrastructure in this country that are currently putting blockages on the building of homes. They said 2050 is the hold up. I do not see anything in this Bill that is going to change that necessarily, other that the prioritisation, which means it is a zero-sum situation. One project moves up and another project moves down. What resources will be added to the likes of An Coimisiún Pleanála? We had representatives of the local authorities in front of the infrastructure committee and we asked did they have enough planners within the planning offices. They said they did not and that they needed another 500 planners in the system. Those are the practical elements. This is a lightweight Bill that, if we look at the enormity of the infrastructural deficit in this country and the damage it is doing to people, is an insult to that problem in reality. I am not confident. For example, most regulations are the same here. Yes, the climate Act is one change. There is no change to the habitat regulation in the context of the legislation. It is European. The Government will hold the Presidency of the European Commission for six months shortly. I have spoken to the Minister's junior Ministers and they are telling me that this regulation is a major block in the building of homes. Midleton flood defences were promised in 2015. There is an elderly gentleman at the moment in Midleton who, when it rains heavily, stays awake at night as a human water gauge to make sure the water does not get to a certain level that people die. This is not going to speed up Midleton. Midleton is a habitats directive issue. Most of the flood defences in this country are habitats. The pearl mussel in Enniscorthy is going to be comfortable on the riverbed in Enniscorthy for another 15 years. The livelihoods of the people of Enniscorthy are not going to be comfortable and this Bill is not going to make a blind bit of difference to that. The Government is going to need regulatory changes, which will need European changes too, to make sure we can get the infrastructure built in this country as well. I laughed out loud when I heard the Minister's statement about not weaponising the climate Act because it is an admission that the climate Act has been weaponised against development in this country, but who passed the climate Act? It is an admission that the Government parties did something really damaging to the development of this country.

Sentiment score: -0.03