This is the most ambitious and detailed plan to date, and there is no doubt that - if implemented - it will be good news for the economy, lifting growth and tackling bottlenecks. With £40 billion to share out, it is almost double the size of the two previous plans.
And perhaps because most of the money is coming from the Exchequer, it is also the most detailed. Apart from the additional money, this plan is very different because it is addressing very different priorities.
In 1989, most of the money was coming from Brussels and the State was in dire economic straits, with debt running at an extraordinary 122 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. A key priority of the first programme was thus to draw as much money as possible from Brussels and to set the economy on a path to stability.
By 1993, when the second plan was drawn up, the economic backdrop had improved and the debt ratio had begun to decline. By then, with unemployment running at over 15 per cent, the priority was jobs. That too has now been tackled, and the Republic is heading towards full employment.
As the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, noted yesterday these problems seemed insurmountable at the time but were not. The same, he hopes, will be said for the 1999 plan.
Now the Government is grappling with the problems of success. The key priority is the investment in infrastructure. Traffic jams and house prices are key concerns right across the State.
The plan certainly puts forward a radical and far-sighted approach. But the crucial problem is implementation. If planning delays and logjams are not broken, the promised new roads will not be delivered.
The Government points to a high-level committee of senior ministers it has put together to tackle this problem. As Ms O'Rourke said yesterday, this will give senior ministers a real chance to have a hands-on approach. Next week CIE executives will be meeting this group to explain their plans, the following week is the turn of the National Roads Authority.
The fear is, of course, that this in itself will not be enough and that big projects will be mired in legal challenges or planning delays. The group has promised to come up with innovative proposals to speed implementation. It has yet to tell us what they are.
Yesterday, IBEC made some suggestions. It proposed that planning permission should be secured before the end of 2000 for all the major infrastructure projects identified.
It also said the High Court should be given resources to eliminate any backlog in legal challenges. The same should be done for An Bord Pleanala and the National Roads Authority.
Even if all this is done, the problem of labour shortage remains. Wages of construction workers have already accelerated greatly. It is possible that the Government could have to choose in a given year between building new roads or, say, building more houses. New tax measures to attract emigrants back, or policies allowing more immigrants, may be needed.
The Cabinet is very upbeat. "The Government has both the imagination and the determination to ensure it will be done", the Tanaiste reassured those at the launch yesterday. Such is the strength of the public finances that the money should be available. The plan relies on economic growth of 5 per cent on average over the next five years, which is well within the predictions of the ESRI.
As Mr McCreevy said, this money will be available while the Government will continue to run surpluses on the finances and provide 1 per cent of GNP every year for future pension provision. The last will have priority within the Exchequer finances, Mr McCreevy said. Within these constraints the Government plans to continue the programme of tax reform.
Crucially, the assumption that the economy can continue to grow at 5 per cent depends on bottlenecks being tackled. If delays mean that traffic congestion and labour shortages worsen, then the economy will grow more slowly and competitiveness will be eroded.
Naturally, a serious international downturn would also affect Ireland and undermine the calculations on which the plan is based. These assume that the OECD economy will grow at around 2.5 per cent a year over the five-year period. A hard landing in the US - or other international shock - could undermine that, and leave us scrambling for money to complete the plan.