Ignore the fanfare. Ireland 2040 is just the latest in a long line of vague plans

REL EASED to tremendous fan fare last week the enormously ambitious Ireland 2040 national planning framework document is certainly a laudable document but it is difficult to deny the opposition’ s claim that it amounts to little more than an election manifesto. As in all such cases the devil is in the detail and, sadly, in this document the detail is sadly lacking. At least as far as rural Ireland is concerned.

The document is supposed to have a little something for everyone and set out a path for the next two decades of development across Ireland.

Though supposedly an all Ireland framework it is primarily focussed on the major cities and the vast majority of the pledges for rural Ireland are generic and lack real specifics.

According to reports emanating from Leinster House it could have been even worse.

There are strong and persistent rumours that a number of influential rural based cabinet members and Fine Gael back bench TD’s forced Leo Varadkar and his team to include more rural initiatives in the scheme.

Given the lack of concrete proposals for rural regions – as opposed to the very specific and costed plans for Dublin and Cork – one can only imagine how threadbare the rural plan would have been had these rural TDs not intervened.

To be fair the Ireland 2040 plan does contain a lot of proposals for rural Ireland but by contrast with the plans for developing our main cities – and a small handful of larger towns – the plan is extremely vague and makes few real promises.

It should also be noted that several of the key proposals in the document were also unveiled several years ago. It would appear that the Government’s predilection for repetitive announcements remains undimmed.

Plans to build a metro in Dublin were first announced in 2005. So too was the Cork Limerick Motorway, which was a key part of the equally ambitious “Transport 21” infrastructure plan.

Going back even further plans for a national children’s hospital – another major development that was shoe horned into the supposedly “historic” Ireland 2040 document – were first announced back in 1984.

34 years later that badly needed hospital remains little more than an artists’ impression on a press release. Progress on it has moved forward in the last few years but it will probably be at least 2022 before the first patient crosses its threshold.

Successive Irish government’s have had a dismal record when it comes to delivering on their national plans, what reason do we have to believe this one will be any different?

The framework’s lengthy 22 year time frame should come in handy for the Government who, presumably, will be long gone by the time their ambitious deadlines have passed without progress.

For the next few years though – and especially once the next election rolls around – we can expect to be hearing a lot about the plan.

We’ve heard this all before and we’ ll believe it when we see it.