Politicians love announcing things but they really, really love launching national development plans or 10-year programmes complete with eye-popping amounts of money pledged for thousands of projects – some in the constituency, naturally – all wrapped up in a glossy brochure, with a portentous launch event at an iconic location.
Drone footage in the accompanying social media videos is obligatory; marginalisation of the Opposition to carping from the sidelines an added bonus.
Monday’s event in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork saw the leaders of the Coalition and their parties in jaunty form as they unveiled the new €165 billion National Development Plan, covering planned capital and investment spending from now until 2030.
How significant is it?
Firstly, the plan is not, as it might appear, a list of projects that Government intends to complete using a certain sum of money over the next 10 years (leave aside the fact that this Government will only be in office for a further 3½ years). Rather, €165 billion is the estimated level of capital spending desirable over the next decade for an economy of Ireland’s size, and a society with our needs, and for which the Government will make provision in its spending plans.
Advanced stage
The list of projects is not a definitive to-do list, but rather a wish list – despite what the Taoiseach says – of competing priorities and identified needs. Some projects, including many road-improvement projects, are at an advanced stage of planning or preconstruction and will go ahead shortly. Others are entirely aspirational and are never likely to see the light of day. Even the western rail corridor gets a mention.
The plan seeks to meet two great imperatives. The first is that Ireland’s population is projected to grow by a million people by 2040, and that requires substantially increased public infrastructure. More than 500,000 more homes will be needed – in just 20 years, remember – and 660,000 new jobs. The country urgently needs to create the infrastructure that allows this to take place and it will spend an awful lot of money – a lot more than is typical in the EU – to do it.
The second imperative is the need to decarbonise our economy, a goal to which all recent governments have committed. The priority given to green projects is what marks this plan down as different to its predecessors.
That does not mean that those decisions – say, dumping individual road projects in favour of public transport, or cycling infrastructure – have been taken yet. Nor does it mean that road building is at an end – it isn’t. Billions of euro will be spend on roads next year and every year.
Blue murder
But one of the clever bits of the plan is the mechanism to prioritise climate-friendly projects and investments in future decision-making processes. Backbenchers – and many Ministers – from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would have kicked up blue murder if a load of road projects were summarily cancelled. This way, they stay in the plan, but the reality is they may get elbowed aside as public transport and cycling eats up the available budget.
Decisions to proceed with individual projects are not dry, technocratic judgments, produced by a Government algorithm. They involve politics – local and national. But the politics of that future decision-making has changed since the Greens came into Government.
Will any of this win make an impression on the electorate?
If big spending plans and glossy brochures could win general elections, no Government would lose an election. That hasn’t, obviously, been the case of late. What matters more is the tangible difference it makes to people on the ground, in their daily lives. Rather like next week’s budget, voters will be more impressed with what politicians do, rather than what they say.
