Sean Fleming
Laois · Fianna Fáil · Ireland
“What the Taoiseach said is interesting. Based on what he said, I can confirm the unusual situation that there are more people who leave County Laois every day to go to work outside the county than there are people with jobs in the county. More Laois people have to commute to work, maybe using the motorway.”
“When somebody want to come to the midlands, what do they do? The people in the office in Athlone take them for a little drive down the road to some place on the outskirts of Athlone. That is what is happening.”
“What happens every time we contact it we are referred to the regional office, which is based in Athlone. What I will say about the four counties the IDA covers in the midlands is that there are 8,000 jobs but only 145 of them are in Laois. Even when we look at the midlands region, it has only 2% of the jobs from IDA-supported companies.”
“I want to raise an issue with the Taoiseach today regarding the lack of Industrial Development Authority, IDA, supported jobs in County Laois. I think the Taoiseach will be shocked by what I have to say. The IDA has ignored Laois for many years. There are 145 IDA-supported jobs in County Laois.”
“It is the fastest growing town Ireland. We are providing houses, as the Government wants us to do. Our local authority is ahead of every other country when it comes to the number of houses. We are getting those houses and we appreciate them. Of course, there are issues but we do not have jobs in Laois for most people.”
“All of the organisations mentioned today have appeared and given their views to our committee over the past several months. That will continue so there is an ample forum in this House to grill any one of those organisations.”
The complete record
Every one of 48 lines we hold for Sean Fleming, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account.
“We have only 2,000 Enterprise Ireland jobs in County Laois, which represents only one in six of the entire midlands region. Both outfits are ignoring County Laois.”
“What the Taoiseach said is interesting. Based on what he said, I can confirm the unusual situation that there are more people who leave County Laois every day to go to work outside the county than there are people with jobs in the county. More Laois people have to commute to work, maybe using the motorway. However, there is also good news. The IDA bought a 45 acre site a few years ago adjacent to a site it already had and it has planning permission to develop it. Let us hope that will bring jobs. The first critical step is for the IDA to arrange a few site visits, not a miserable two visits which it arranged two years ago. The figure has to be up at ten or 12. I understand the issue of clustering and I believe that can have an impact. We need a good kickstart in Laois to get up there in that regard. Enterprise Ireland is not much better.”
“It is the fastest growing town Ireland. We are providing houses, as the Government wants us to do. Our local authority is ahead of every other country when it comes to the number of houses. We are getting those houses and we appreciate them. Of course, there are issues but we do not have jobs in Laois for most people.”
“When somebody want to come to the midlands, what do they do? The people in the office in Athlone take them for a little drive down the road to some place on the outskirts of Athlone. That is what is happening. Of course, the IDA will say to us that it cannot tell people where to go; they want to go to places where there is already a cluster of other IDA companies. In pursuing that, however, it has left Laois totally out on a limb. I think the Taoiseach will be shocked to hear that the figures are as stark as they are. I will shortly have a few words to say about Laois's central location, the motorway and the best train service of any regional town in Ireland. The population has gone from 30,000 to 90,000 in my time as a TD. The population of Portlaoise has gone from 10,000 to 30,000 in the last number of years.”
“What happens every time we contact it we are referred to the regional office, which is based in Athlone. What I will say about the four counties the IDA covers in the midlands is that there are 8,000 jobs but only 145 of them are in Laois. Even when we look at the midlands region, it has only 2% of the jobs from IDA-supported companies. When we look at it nationally, it is even worse. I got the figures for site visits to County Laois by the IDA for the most recent available year, which is 2024, from a response to a parliamentary question. There were two site visits to County Laois but there were 18 to Westmeath. Why? The IDA regional office is in Athlone and there is an absolute complete and total bias by the people in the regional office in Athlone in terms of bringing people to other counties.”
“I want to raise an issue with the Taoiseach today regarding the lack of Industrial Development Authority, IDA, supported jobs in County Laois. I think the Taoiseach will be shocked by what I have to say. The IDA has ignored Laois for many years. There are 145 IDA-supported jobs in County Laois. That is by far the bottom of its list by a long shot. If the Laois figures were replicated nationally, those figures would amount to 8,000 IDA-supported jobs across the country. If that was the case, the Government would have closed up the IDA for not doing its job years ago. Its record is so bad in County Laois and this has to be dealt with. I am pleading for the Taoiseach's personal help with the IDA chief executive and senior management to do something about this.”
“If the Oireachtas started its work on this legislation by delaying its implementation by six months, it would not send a good signal. We are better to do our detailed work as we would normally do on Committee Stage. Every organisation that could have been expected to come in as part of pre-legislative scrutiny has already appeared, or will be appearing, before our committee in the normal course of events in the weeks and months ahead. I am satisfied that the legislation, when it is passed, will be effective. All I will say to the Government is that when the legislation is completed I ask the Minister, Deputy Chambers, to monitor progress on a monthly basis to make sure he is satisfied all the targets are being delivered on.”
“That has already been said by Members of the Opposition during the past hour, and I agree with it. As Chairman of the committee, it is my honest belief that if we had done pre-legislative scrutiny, we would be inviting people in to listen to them from now until the recess in June or July; we would come back next September or October for a draft report; we might have a final report by next October; and all of this could delay the critical infrastructure legislation by six months. I believe this legislation is important. We need to get on with it, with proper Oireachtas scrutiny, but we do not need to delay it unnecessarily. As has been said here, we can quote all the delays we like all over the country and we can refer to everybody who causes those delays.”
“All of the organisations mentioned today have appeared and given their views to our committee over the past several months. That will continue so there is an ample forum in this House to grill any one of those organisations. I encourage people who are of a mind to do so, and have the time to do so, to come to tomorrow's meeting with the NDFA, which will have a key input to make to this entire process. It will be more efficient to have a centralised repository of skills in an area rather than every Department having to go it alone. I expect that the Committee Stage debate next week will be thorough, detailed and very effective. I look forward to it. There have been legitimate comments that we did not have pre-legislative scrutiny on this Bill. It has already been said by people in this House that it is a very short, simple Bill.”
“What has been proposed here is proportionate and reasonable in the circumstances. I am very pleased that the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA, will have a key role in providing advice to various Government bodies, rather than each Government body when it has a project having to go away and get its own consultants to do it. There will be a repository of information available to the NDFA, which is appearing before the committee I will chair tomorrow as part of this ongoing work. We have a specific Oireachtas committee dealing with infrastructure, which we have never had before, so there is an opportunity there. Any Member of this House or the Seanad is welcome to attend any of our meetings, which happen every week. We have had a series of meetings with agencies such as Uisce Éireann and Bord Gáis.”
“The number of such reviews has increased substantially in recent years. We are all familiar with that. Wind farms and renewable energy have been mentioned. We have been all been at meetings where objectors, who have the right to object, say that their approach will be to object at local authority level and to An Bord Pleanála, and then, regardless of what happens there, to go for a judicial review and go to the High Court. They hope that this will take seven or eight years and the developers will have gone away by then. Most of us, if we are honest, will say that we have attended meetings where people have said openly and publicly, before a single plan has been put on the table, that they will delay it for seven or eight years and then they will go away. That is no way to run the country.”
“The House and its Members love to complicate things when they get into detail but sometimes there can be a simple approach. We have over-complicated our lives. Every one of us knows that at local level, not to mind here at national level. We want to have co-ordination between all of these bodies. This action plan will lead to regulatory simplification, acknowledging the laws and the environmental laws that are there. Every time we delay a project, time is money. A delayed project costs more money. Whose money is it? It is the taxpayers' money. It is not in the interests of this House or the people who elected us to this House to delay things unnecessarily. It is important we look after the taxpayers' money wisely in all of these areas. This issue of judicial reviews has been mentioned.”
“In the coming months and years, Ministers will be watching all these and it is important that there will be ongoing reporting by the Minister for public expenditure to ensure they are all delivering as they are required to by the Government. That will be as a result of matters laid before this Dáil. The Government is not going to do this behind the public’s back. We have various frameworks in place for consenting agencies, all of which have a value. They would not be there otherwise but we need to ensure complex and overlapping consents do not prohibit essential works being undertaken. The recent infrastructure action plan covers a lot of legal reform and regulatory simplification and I acknowledge the Minister’s work in bringing that in.”
“Through our engagement with the business community, I understand many people are furious at the delays and the time major capital projects take. Many people cannot build a home because of the lack of infrastructure. Motorists are stuck in traffic jams for hours when they need to get to work on time or get children to school and we need the infrastructure for all these areas that are very important for the delivery of these services. The accelerating infrastructure task force report found successive reforms over many years have significantly increased the complexity of modern infrastructure delivery. Every time we set up a new agency, it is an independent body that is only responsible to itself and its board or its line Department. It is important we have co-ordination between these bodies on an ongoing basis.”
“Many Deputies have mentioned this and they must work together collectively. For example, in a recent report I read, there was reference to several consenting bodies and regulatory bodies, and they have to work together in co-operation rather than in individual silos. The ones in that report were the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, Environmental Protection Agency, Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, An Coimisiún Pleanála and National Parks and Wildlife Service. Every one of those has a specific role to fulfil backed up by legislation, but part of what is behind this is to make them sit down together on projects that can affect those various agencies, not for each one of them to do it in sequence so that in five years we have reached the end of an approval or consenting basis. That is important.”
“Everybody in the House, including me, could draw up a list of two dozen critical pieces of infrastructure that are required in our counties but if this legislation is to be effective, we cannot swamp these public bodies with 50, 60, 70, 80 or 100 critical projects because which of them would the public bodies prioritise? The essence of successfully implementing legislation will be to strategically concentrate on key projects that will help delivery of housing and other infrastructure such as water services that have been mentioned. If we are focused on what we do, we can get a lot done but it is important we do not overstretch all the public bodies beyond their ability to deliver these projects. It is also important that we simplify and streamline the regulatory and consenting process.”
“The Government will designate individual projects or programmes as critical infrastructure by order to be laid before Dáil Éireann, meaning every specific project will have to be laid before this House and if a resolution annulling the order is passed within the next 21 sitting days, the order shall be annulled. There will, therefore, be an opportunity for these to be debated in the House. I stress this is about national infrastructure to help in the three areas I have mentioned. We cannot get into fixing every pothole using this legislation. That is not the intention.”
“A recent Government circular established a mandatory cross-government process for the rapid reporting of court decisions that may affect the delivery of critical national infrastructure. This ensures early identification of judicial decisions that could influence how future infrastructure projects are planned or assessed and delivered. That is important because not every Government agency watches what every other agency is doing and there could be a court decision that could be relevant across the board and it is important we have a centralised area to keep a close eye on and have the information on these matters.”
“Public bodies will also be required to co-operate with each other. That is going to be a new process for many organisations but that is essentially how the Bill will operate. They will be able to co-ordinate, prioritise and sequence their duties with other public bodies and allocate any administrative, technical or decision-making resources necessary for a rapid approval of a project or programme. The Bill specifically identifies critical infrastructure in the energy, transport and water sectors as a priority. This infrastructure is necessary to underpin all other development in the State from housing, which is the most important infrastructure we need, to other economic and social investments.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. As Chairman of the Joint Committee on Infrastructure and National Development Plan Delivery, I welcome this particular discussion and look forward to this legislation going to the committee. As Chairman, I will ensure we have a thorough, effective and detailed discussion on Committee Stage. We will have ample time for any issues that need to be raised, discussed or teased out at the committee where we can get into the specifics of the legislation. I welcome and support this important Bill that creates a new fast track approval process for critical infrastructure. Under this new legislation, every public body will be required to do everything within its power to accelerate approval of any designated project to the maximum extent possible.”
“I appreciate the comment on Leprino, which closed in Portlaoise and was originally Glanbia, an Enterprise Ireland project. Because it was sold to an American company, it now comes under the remit of the IDA. That it just a book transfer but we need to get a facility reopened in that location as quickly as possible. I ask that when the Minister is arranging the visits for Enterprise Ireland and the IDA, Laois be put high on the list. IDA has a 45-acre facility in Portlaoise and planning permission was granted on that in 2024 to lay roads, paths and lighting to facilitate development. We want to see follow-through from the IDA. It is totally out of kilter with the rest of the country. How can the IDA only have two jobs per 1,000 people in County Laois? It is off the scale completely, compared with other counties.”
“The figure for Enterprise Ireland is not much better; it has about 2,000 jobs in the county, which is the third lowest in the whole country. I am asking for a positive response and for the Minister to ask the IDA to do more for County Laois because it has not done much to date.”
“I thank the Minister for that information. It has confirmed the issue I raised. I want to highlight the following situation. There are 52 IDA-supported jobs per 1,000 people in Westmeath. The figure in Longford is 35 per 1,000 and in Offaly 16 per 1,000. The figure for County Laois is two per 1,000. The IDA does not exist in Laois; I wonder does Laois exist in the minds of the IDA. It has a big regional office in Westmeath, and more power to it, but because that office is in Westmeath, people who come to the midlands are shown Westmeath first. We might be an extra 40 minutes down the road but it is well worth a visit. There is something strategically wrong with the IDA when it can have only two jobs per 1,000 people.”
“Will the Minister comment on the number of IDA Ireland jobs in County Laois? The most recent figures I received show 145 IDA Ireland-supported jobs in County Laois. In the midland region, which includes four counties, there are over 8,000. Laois has 30% of the population of the midlands region and less than 2% of IDA Ireland jobs.”
“This facility could be suitable in that regard. There are two nursing homes that have been in the national media and before the courts in recent months. As a result of that, the HSE is currently not using them. People looking for respite have to travel a very long distance outside the county to get that. People should be able to get respite within their own county. We have the property in Rathdowney. Of course it needs investment, but it could be a multi-use facility. I ask the HSE not to turn its back on Rathdowney, as it seems to be doing in the context of both Erkina House and the health centre.”
“That is the word I would use. If the facility has been starved of investment, it will not meet the new requirements necessary for the health and safety and the mental health of the people there. We have a great asset in Rathdowney. I have been told that the Minister of State has been looking at getting a new health centre in a different location. Very recently, I have had it in writing from the HSE that the Minister of State will not proceed on that basis because it is too expensive and that she will look at the property owned by the HSE in the town. I ask that there be an extension to the existing health centre at its current location or that it be combined with Erkina House in order that, like many other HSE buildings, it will have a dual use. I ask for that to be considered, if appropriate. We are short of respite places.”
“I thank the Minister of State for her response. I understand and appreciate what she is saying, but, obviously, I have a number of questions. As already stated, the Minister of State was involved in an issue relating to Erkina House a number of years ago and was very positive and helpful on that occasion. The Minister of State indicated that a significant level of investment would be required to develop Erkina House in order to achieve the additional regulatory standards required. We all agree on that. Everybody in Ireland agrees. Everybody in Rathdowney agrees. The reason that is required is because the place was starved of investment in recent years. Those responsible deliberately made sure that nothing was done in an organised manner when there were up to 12 residents on the premises. They chose to close it by stealth.”
“Its two facilities in Rathdowney, Erkina House and the health centre, have been starved of funds and investment, and this is resulting in a poorer health service at the expense of the people in Rathdowney and surrounding areas. This must stop now. We need investment in these facilities, not closures.”
“The HSE should invest in its own respite facility rather than paying a fortune of taxpayers' hard-earned money to private nursing homes. As everyone is aware, two private nursing homes in Laois are already under investigation and monitoring in relation to various matters and as a result, we are short on respite beds in County Laois. Erkina House would be an excellent respite facility for the area, as well as continuing the services it currently provides. I also suggested it as a suitable location for the health centre in the town, as the existing facility is recognised by all and the HSE as not being fit to meet the modern-day standards for facilities. The HSE is turning its back on Rathdowney and south County Laois.”
“I sincerely hope the staff will be fully respected by the HSE and whatever arrangements it comes to will be outlined in detail to them. A key priority is also that the staff will be dealt with fairly. I fully understand that Erkina House is an old building and does not meet the current health and safety standards which the residents and staff are entitled to. This is because the HSE has failed to invest and bring this facility up to a standard over the years. There also is an acute shortage of respite beds in County Laois and many Laois people who have had surgery in hospitals locally and require short-term respite are regularly told to go to another county as the HSE does not have adequate respite facilities in County Laois.”
“All I can say is here we go again with the HSE. Now it says there will be no new admissions to Erkina House. This is closure by stealth. Three years ago, the HSE guaranteed that no residents would be moved out without their and their families' consent. Very recently, I have had a family in contact with me, saying they were against their family member being moved out. If it is now happening, it can only be because the HSE has bullied them to accept the HSE's proposal. I understand there are two or three residents in Erkina House at this stage. This fits into the HSE agenda of closing Erkina House by stealth, which it has been working to do. The care provided by staff in Erkina House is superb. The care and attention and, if I am allowed to say it, the affection they have shown for the residents is exemplary.”
“I want to raise the issue of Erkina House, Rathdowney, which is a long established and excellent HSE facility that comes under the mental health services. By definition, the residents are vulnerable people and are entitled to peace of mind and not to be upset by the HSE in their works. Three years ago, we raised this in the House, and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, was with us and was personally involved in the situation where the HSE announced it was going to close Erkina House three years ago. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, was directly involved and that did not proceed. There were 12 residents in Erkina House at that stage and the HSE, after that, announced the closure of this facility but subsequently publicly apologised to residents and their families for the unnecessary upset caused to them.”
“To those who say that we are going to have offshore generation, I heard at my committee meeting that it will be 25 years before offshore energy is produced by wind farms. Do not listen to any guff saying that this is a real option in the near future. We have to make sure we have sustainable energy for ourselves. We are not here to export cheap electricity to other countries from which we will get no gain, other than having to tolerate wind turbines, shadow flicker, the noise and everything else. We are not here to allow some people to make a fortune on the backs of the Irish people.”
“They will be left like a blight on the landscape for generations to come, and people will be amazed that we facilitated this. There is a proposal for community ownership of this. There should be a community gain and a community benefit. It should not just be a case of buttering up the local people. I would be concerned that if there is something left in 40 years' time, whoever the trustees or the local investors are could be held liable for the clean-up costs. If you are an owner, you could be caught for costs. Things can go wrong over the years. I would like to see a community gain rather than community ownership. All in all, I welcome this debate. We have a long way to go. We are not here to facilitate people in benefiting from putting wind turbines in our areas too close to our houses. I am all for turbines in the right locations.”
“This reminds me of what is happening in some places in China where people are working for little or nothing to produce the clothes many of us here are wearing. Those people are being abused, many individuals are making a profit and we are getting the benefit of the cheap clothes. That is the exact situation in this instance. The investors to whom I refer are going to sell a product cheaply into France on the backs of the Irish people who are going to have to tolerate wind turbines, shadow flicker and everything that goes with that. We have to be careful in that regard. After the 45-year period - ten years for planning to get it directed and a lifetime of 35 years - who is going to guarantee where the turbines are going to go?”
“Again, my principal objection to this application and all the others relates to the fact that they involve the net export of energy out of Ireland. It is not the function of any local authority, An Coimisiún Pleanála or the Government of Ireland to directly facilitate private investors - Irish, English or those from Hong Kong or wherever - in order that they can make profits on the backs of people in Ireland. The export of energy through the Celtic interconnector to France and Europe is purely for the profit of the developers. There is no gain in this for Ireland. We are talking here about surplus energy that will be exported and that will not be produced for the benefit of Ireland.”
“This is going to set the precedent for all of Ireland in the context of what local authorities and An Coimisiún Pleanála should do in respect of these cases in the future. There will be certainty - that might be good or bad, we do not know yet - once the Supreme Court makes its decision on this application. An Coimisiún Pleanála will know how to proceed in the future. This is a very important case that is before the Supreme Court. We all have to watch the outcome of that very closely. Let us hope that it will be in line with what An Coimisiún Pleanála did in the first place by not granting the application. The most recent case in County Laois relates to the Laois-Kilkenny border. It is called the Seskin application. A great deal of work has been done in that area.”
“There was no public meeting. No one ever came to a meeting, so they have shown contempt. At that time, I objected strenuously, as did the whole community. Laois County Council refused the application. I went to An Bord Pleanála, which is now An Coimisiún Pleanála, which also turned it down, and rightly so. The developer went for a judicial review. In the court, the judge told An Coimisiún Pleanála - which had refused the application - to go reconsider its decision. He did not overrule it, but told An Coimisiún Pleanála, in the clearest way possible, to reconsider its position. That left An Coimisiún Pleanála in an awkward position because it did not know whether what it came back with would stand up in court, and rightly so. The matter was then referred to the Supreme Court.”
“I have noticed something that is a very bad precedent that we have to watch. If a development in future is quite small, it can go through easily but if it is of a particular scale, it might be considered strategic infrastructural development, which involves a different process. I have an example of a number of turbines in one location that were joined by one cable to a number of turbines in another location and they are now considered one application. If this trick is done by the developers, they can have small clusters, link them all with a cable and say those are national strategic infrastructure. They would then be able to go through a different planning process. This is not satisfactory and we have to be watchful of this. The public consultation for the wind farm proposal I mentioned was a leaflet drop to some houses in the area.”
“In more recent years, we had a big application for an area called Coolglass, which is between the back of The Swan, up to Wolfhill and across to Timahoe. After a lot of public consultation, it was agreed by the executive and Laois County Council that the area where the application was submitted and other parts of the county were not areas for consideration for wind farms. The regulator looked at the plan, made no comment and was happy with this inclusion. The Minister looked at the plan when it went to the Department and said there was no problem with it. However, a developer came along and made an application for an area that was specifically marked as not for consideration. This shows how little regard there is for local democracy, when this was approved at local level and all the way up the line.”
“It went away and came back a year and a half later, by which time it had moved the turbines to well over a kilometre away from any house. It dropped a few of them. It listened and now we have seven or eight turbines in the place, working and generating good renewable energy. The turbines are well over a kilometre from houses. I stress these wind turbines are much smaller as the ones we have now. The community was satisfied and it is working satisfactorily. The developer listened to the local community and is to be commended. This is the only good success we have had with wind turbines in County Laois. It is on the Carlow border and overlooks County Carlow, and I am happy to acknowledge the work Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor from Carlow has done in this regard.”
“In my role as a TD, I have had direct involvement on behalf of local communities in respect of the location of wind turbines in various locations throughout County Laois, and some of those developments also impacted on neighbouring counties such as Kilkenny and Carlow. Many years ago, the first involvement I had on behalf of a community was regarding a wind farm called Gortahile in Rossmore, which is overlooking County Carlow but very much in County Laois. When that application came through, the developer was proposing to put a wind turbine within 300 m of the nearest house. I objected very strenuously, and the community and I were united at that time. We met the developer and told it two words: "Go away".”
“As regards the housing in Portlaoise, thousands of houses have been built in Laois in recent years, more than in any other county per capita . We therefore have all the facilities that are required in Portlaoise. The IDA has a 30 ha site already in Portlaoise. We want to see an advance factory on that site as urgently as possible. If we have that, we might have a location to bring clients to.”
“I thank the Minister for that and, in particular, his commitment to help arrange a meeting between the TDs, the chief executive of Laois County Council and appropriate IDA officials - or Enterprise Ireland officials, while we are at it, because the figures for Enterprise Ireland in Laois are abysmally low as well. We are almost at the bottom. I will make a few key points. The Minister mentioned Leprino. That company provides 135 jobs. We hope we can get a replacement. It is a high-tech business. That replacement, however, would only maintain the jobs already in the county. Portlaoise is ideally located. It has the best road network in the country. It is on the M7. Thirty-two trains leave Portlaoise every day for Dublin and Portarlington. We have the best train service of any provincial town in the country.”
“I was especially worried when the Minister said that the IDA wanted to partner with existing FDI investments that were already up and running in the midlands region and nationwide because that means it would exclude Laois. The county does not have those investments. It is remarkable that the Laois figure is so low.”
“I thank the Minister for that overview of the midlands region but I am sure he will understand if I speak about Laois in particular. At the end of last year, there were 8,045 IDA-supported jobs in the midlands. Laois has 30% of the population of the midland counties but has only 1.8% of the IDA-supported jobs in the area. If one looks at the county-by-county list produced by the IDA, one sees that Laois has 145 IDA-supported jobs. It is a disgrace. I say that publicly. The total of 145 is, by a mile, the lowest of any county in the country even though the services in Laois are as good and as available as anywhere else. I was very worried by the Minister's statement. I would ask him to introduce the IDA to County Laois and to arrange a meeting for the TDs and the chief executive of Laois County Council on this.”
“We must have a permanent structure for funding for capital investment, but not just based on windfall tax revenue when we get it.”
“I would like to know whether the Taoiseach has a date of publication for the review of the national development plan and whether he knows the period to be covered by the updated plan. As Chair of the Joint Committee on Infrastructure and National Development Plan Delivery, I believe everybody in the House must accept the need for long-term investment in housing, transport, water, electricity and health digitalisation. My view, based on the meetings we have had so far, is that this will require substantial funding in addition to what has been mentioned so far. We should ensure a greater proportion of annual funding for housing and other infrastructure for the coming years. Because of the scale of what is required, we need to do that and not just rely on windfall tax revenue, such as from Apple, or profit on the sale of AIB.”