NDP blueprint - Plan must give value for money

WITH less than six months to the General Election, the battle for the hearts and minds of voters has been ignited by the highly ambitious National Development Plan rolled out by the Government yesterday.

Unveiled by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the much leaked €184 billion economic and social blueprint is also an election manifesto calculated to set the political agenda for the weeks and months ahead. It is an adroit stroke, the Government has thrown down a challenge to the opposition parties to come up with ideas and proposals to match this concept.

However, spending estimates for the next seven years are so astronomical as to be largely aspirational. Predicated on an upbeat forecast of economic growth of over 4% a year, the plan goes under the slick electioneering slogan: ‘Transforming Ireland — a better quality of life for all’.

Obviously, unforeseen events could derail this development juggernaut. Another oil crisis could trigger a global economic downturn. If Ireland’s economy, which is excessively dependent on the construction and services sectors, failed to perform, the scenario would be radically altered.

Yet the document represents a powerful bid to set the nation’s course over the next seven years. It bears the fingerprints of Finance Minister Brian Cowen, hotly tipped to succeed Bertie Ahern as leader of Fianna Fáil and, possibly, as Taoiseach when the present incumbent steps down.

In every respect, the commitments in this massive spending programme on housing, health and education dwarf the scale of the previous National Development Plan 2000-2006. The staggering total is more than four times the national debt of €38.2 billion at the end of 2005.

With traffic jams growing by the day, nearly €40bn will go towards investment in badly needed infrastructure including roads, public transport, railways, buses, the Luas and Dublin’s proposed Metro.

In a bald pre-election stroke, nearly half the money will be focused on improving the social services and targeting social inclusion.

Aware that housing will be a political hot potato on the doorstep, the Coalition earmarks €21bn for social and affordable housing, targeting 140,000 households and creating 60,000 new local authority houses plus another 17,000 affordable homes.

Keenly aware of the importance of the grey vote, it proposes significant investment in pensions, a welcome step towards staving off a looming crisis as the population ages and the size of the workforce diminishes.

In a bid to advance the peace process, money will be poured into cross-Border projects from 2007 to 2013.

Overall, the blueprint includes €5bn for health infrastructure; €12bn for childcare, special needs education, welfare and protection of children; €20bn for people with disabilities; €5bn for school modernisation; and €13bn for improving third-level facilities.

All this is welcome. But it ignores the stern warnings of the ESRI, the State’s economic think-tank, which predicts the level of spending envisaged would cause inflation. Suggesting the plan could also lead to poor value for money, it has advised the Government to cut back on the level of investment.

Clearly, these signals have been discounted. According to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the scale of funding in the new NDP was until recently unimaginable.

Going on the Government’s past record, when money was squandered on major projects, there must be total transparency, full accountability strict control over the management of this epic plan to ensure taxpayers get value for money.