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Irish Times

State urged to target five or six ‘crucial' infrastructure projects

The State should target five, or six 'crucial' projects, including Dublin's water supply , a multibillion upgrade of the electricity network and ring roads for Cork and Limerick, it has been urged. A debate on the future of the State's economy at the Patrick MacGill Summer School in Glenties Co Donegal heard that nearly €2 billion needs to be spent annually to provide water supplies for an extra 50,000 houses a year, skewed heavily towards high-density developments in places such as north Dublin. 'I recommend that we would focus on five or six projects that are absolutely crucial. I'd call them early wins. I'm not saying they're easy wins, but they need to be done,' Sean Finlay, president of the Irish Academy of Engineering, said. Political support is required to accelerate the Greater Dublin Drainage project, which has recently been granted planning mission, he said. READ MORE 'That really needs to move on because, if it doesn't, we're not going to be able to facilitate extra housing in north Dublin.' The Government also 'should bypass' the regulatory bureaucracy it has created and directly task EirGrid and ESB to deliver a national electricity master plan, one that must involve the private sector. On roads, the second phase of the Limerick Northern Distributor Road must be accelerated to open up lands for development, along with providing extra public transport services to ease traffic congestion in the city. Equally, the Cork R624 Belvelly Bridge-Great Island/Cobh road should be accelerated to offer extra houses in Great Island and Cobh, along with extra spending to open up lands in Marino Point in Cork city. The Cork Northern Distributor road would 'open up' the northside of the city, solve the 'inadequate' access to Apple campus with its 6,000 staff and offer better connections to major roads, including the planned Cork/Limerick motorway, he said. Mr Finlay also said that Dublin's northside Dart line must be twin-tracked and Malahide's Dart station relocated, while a twin-track line between Galway and Oranmore should be constructed, along with upgrades for the Portarlington/Galway line. Economic and Social Research Institute director Martina Lawless pointed out that there are now one million more people working in the State than there were 25 years ago. However, the State 'to use a somewhat trite analogy, is like a child who's just had a major growth spurt. That's great news, but now all our clothes are too small. We have not kept up with the infrastructure needed all across the board'. Rejecting criticisms of the Government's plans to reduce the size of apartments, Seamus Coffey , the chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council , said 90 per cent of the State's homes are houses. 'What we don't have are units for one and two people. We need lots more,' he said, 'If we had more single person units, they could go and live in them and have their life there and then more housing would be freed up for more houses and families.'