Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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There are surely. I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I thank the Minister of State for taking this Topical Issue. Anyone who goes to the north and west, which consists of Connacht and the parts of Ulster within the Republic of Ireland, is more than aware, just by driving through it, of the lack of infrastructure. In fact, there are no motorways in Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo or Roscommon. There might be a small bit of motorway in Ballinasloe that is in Roscommon, but if there is, it is very short. The reality is that the motorways in Galway consist of the one in Limerick that stops in Tuam and the one from Dublin that goes to Galway.

Grid infrastructure is totally insufficient, even though places like rural areas of Connacht are high-possibility areas for onshore wind generation. When we look under the ground, we find there is a high number of houses without any public water supply and that are dependent on wells and streams, which everyone knows are unsuitable. When we look at towns, we see they are unsewered. Many of the villages do not have any public wastewater systems and cannot expand. When we look at towns that have wastewater systems, they are totally inadequate. On and on it goes when you actually look at the reality on the ground.

I raised this issue previously in the form of parliamentary questions. I hope the same answer has not been regurgitated again, in which a small number of ongoing projects was listed, such as the Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge road project and so forth. What has not happened and what has got worse, however, is the percentage of the expenditure going to the most deprived region in terms of infrastructure, which is way beneath its population share. Looking at the figures, 9.9% of the tenders of more than €1 million under the national development plan went to the northern and western region, even though it has 17.6% of the population. This is not a depopulated area; there is quite a population in it. Looking at tenders in excess of €20 million, the percentage drops to 5.5%. I have no doubt the Department of public expenditure will point out there are some schemes and infrastructure projects that span different regions and might not be covered, such as the national broadband plan. While that is true, even if we stripped that out, there is still a total disparity. The analysis has been fairly thorough in that regard. For example, and this is something that would be dear to the Minister of State’s heart, excluding the two research centres in Galway city, there are no other research centres from Letterkenny to east Cavan and from east Cavan all the way down to Galway. What we need, therefore, is a reversal.

In the 2000s, when we started constructing motorways, I raised a valid question about the need for infrastructure in the west and how the motorways were going to the south, the south west and to Galway but there was very little going to be constructed in that arc which constitutes the western and northern region. I was promised, and it was in Transport 21, that the next iteration would make up for that. This disparity has continued, however.

It seems to me that, when things are done on a cost-benefit analysis, which is the way they are done and which is false, it will always be skewed to where the maximum number of people are. This, therefore, creates problems of overpopulation in some areas and total depopulation in areas that could do with the population and which have the schools, the social infrastructure, the sports facilities, the health centres and whatever else. They could actually do with the population. We are exacerbating our problems by not having balanced regional development.

Every document that comes out now mentions balanced regional development. Despite this, an answer to a parliamentary question I submitted on this matter said that these decisions lie with each line Minister. I would have thought that the delivery of national development plan projects would have an overarching requirement by the Department of national development plan delivery ensuring there was balanced regional development in the round.