Spending money is easy. Deciding on political priorities is hard. So when it came to picking the new economic growth centres of the State, the minority Government passed.
There was no way it would cold-bloodedly choose a handful of growth towns and risk alienating their less fortunate neighbours. That was a sure-fire recipe for begrudgery and lost votes. Look what happened when a government sought to rationalise hospital services in the 1970s!
The job of picking winners and losers was hived off to the Department of the Environment and Local Government. And the issue, we were told, would "form the focus of a mid-term review in the year 2003." That was far enough away not to generate waves in the next general election. Market forces, rather than political planning, would dictate developments.
The Government readily agreed with the ESRI that the specific designation of a secondary tier of regional "gateways" required further detailed study, and Noel Dempsey was given the job of devising a "national spatial strategy", with winners and losers, four years down the line.
"Gateway" status is our new economic rosette. And regional development policy will be based on it. . .eventually. Five cities in the State have already achieved this most favoured category: Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Waterford and Galway are on the pig's back in terms of job creation, economic output and centres for growth. And, because "capacity constraints" are emerging, they will suck in further infrastructural investment.
The need to provide for those cities that have already achieved economic breakthrough may explain some of the Government's reluctance to nominate new cities and towns for rapid development. But it did offer encouraging noises. It coyly noted that emerging urban centres that had not yet made it to gateway status - in terms of population size, strategic location, range of skills and services, industrial and manufacturing base - were showing the potential to lift the levels of development in their respective counties/regions.
The designation of such centres as "gateways", it suggested, would depend on their potential to stimulate growth and the quality of their transport connections to other parts of the State. Their identification and development would be "a key element of regional policy over the period".
Just in case smaller towns were beginning to feel left out, the plan rushed to reassure them of the "crucial need for a tier of development hubs that are primarily relevant at county and local level." Below that again, an effective regional policy would require the full exploitation of the potential of smaller towns and villages and rural areas to ensure they were attractive as locations for commercial activity.
It was all very comforting. And deliberately vague. If the designation of gateways is such an important issue, why has the decision been pushed four years down the road in a plan with a seven-year lifespan? It hardly represents the rigorous planning the Government would have us believe it is engaged in. Ministers, it appears, are relying on the "market" to do their planning for them. The development of existing gateways and larger urban centres, the plan says blandly, "will continue, largely driven by market forces." Of course there are major spending programmes in this plan. But their implementation is very much dependent on continuing benign economic circumstances. And, because they will be funded largely by the State, rather that the EU, their flexibility is all the greater.
Looking back on past economic forecasting, that is a comforting notion. The last national plan, from 1994 to 1999, was based on average GNP growth of 3.5 per cent and employment gains of 1.75 per cent a year.
In reality, GNP grew by 7.5 per cent and employment by 5 per cent. We got it magnificently wrong. And we are now racing madly to prevent our infrastructural system seizing up.
We can thank the EU for being lumbered with a seven-year plan. The bureaucrats in Brussels wanted to make a splash with declining levels of structural funding as the EU prepared for enlargement.
And we wanted to secure the maximum amount of EU money, to the extent of dividing the State into two regions. But it does nothing for rapidresponse, flexible planning.
The plan will be formally submitted to Brussels this week. And the Government will hope its handling of regional issues will not be queried. For while great emphasis was laid on consultations with the social partners in preparing the document, a great void loomed where the devolution of power to the regions was concerned.
The regional assemblies, made up of locally elected representatives, will be allowed only to administer and monitor elements of the plan. The number of elected representatives on the monitoring committees has not even been agreed.
Power will still lie with central Government. And while State agencies and Government Departments are expected to co-operate with regional assemblies in delivering sub-programmes, the buck will ultimately stop on the Minister's desk.
Not much devolution of power there. But there is talk of local representatives helping to co-ordinate public services within the regions. And a specific power entrusted to the regional assemblies comes in the shape of a poisoned chalice: unwilling to nominate the new gateway cities itself, the Government suggests that the regional assemblies should do the job.
And pigs might fly.