SO WHAT WOULD YOU DO? LEO PUTS IT UP TO CRITICS OF FUTURE PLAN

TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar last night called on critics of the Project 2040 plan to set out what they would do instead.

Shrugging off claims that the plan amounted to a Fine Gael election manifesto, he said it included inputs supplied by other political parties, despite their universal protestations about it last night.

He challenged them: ‘If there are things they want to add, they should say what they will remove.

‘If there is something they want to accelerate, they should say what they will slow down.’

The Taoiseach said he hoped for political support for the plan and that it would not be dismantled, like so many before, by an incoming government. ‘I would expect other political parties to come behind it, or to say what they would do differently,’ Mr Varadkar said.

If parties looked at it, they would see elements of their policies, he insisted, while he said it also reflected the submissions of 1,000 organisations and ordinary citizens.

It was ‘absolutely not’ a defiance of the ‘new politics’, he said. Mr Varadkar said that it was a plan that stretched to 2040, and could not be seen as an election manifesto because ‘election cycles tend to be short-term. In 20 years’ time, there will have been many elections.’

He added: ‘We have the plan, we have the money, so now we move on.’

On the metro, Mr Varadkar said it would be completed in 2027. He added that he had signed the order for the Luas cross-city, and it had been realised, as had the vast majority of projects in the last NDP.

The motorways were also dismissed as pie in the sky in the past, and yet they got done, he said.

The metro is set to serve the airport, Swords, Santry, DCU and the Mater Hospital and reach St Stephen’s Green, while also going further south, along with the Luas line.

The Taoiseach also defended his record on the Six-One News last night. ‘The Government never promised tens or hundreds of thousands of houses overnight,’ he said.

‘Last year, we built three times the number of social houses that we did the year before. So this is now going to be ramped up.’ He added: ‘It’s my mission to make sure it happens.’

The return of construction workers from abroad was already happening, he said, and it could be that they would not be able to access the UK in a few years’ time, adding ‘and we will be very attractive’.

He said investment in the hospital sector through three new elective surgery facilities was about getting better bang for our buck.

The National Spatial Strategy was a ‘load of nonsense’ he said, with its 20 hubs and similar number of gateway towns. The current plan did not pick centres, but allowed all parts of the country to grow.

The decentralisation plan had gone to 53 places in theory, further complicating the situation, he said. ‘We’re not making the same mistakes again.’

Mr Varadkar admitted that many capital projects already under way had been included, ‘but that’s the way a capital investment plan has to work’.

Asked to cite ten new projects, he named BusConnects, the M20 Cork to Limerick motorway, the N4 upgrade and said he could offer others if he had time to think.

‘We have the money, so now we move on’