Capital spending plan - Cabinet is right to prioritise

GIVEN the dire state of the economy, it would be sheer madness had the Government not wielded the axe on a raft of projects in its infrastructure and capital investment programme for the next five years.

Among key ventures which have been deferred, Dublin’s Metro North, the DART underground and Thornton Hall prison were relics of the long extinct Celtic Tiger, an era when, despite repeated warnings, the Fianna Fáil-Green administration splurged as if the good times would never end.

For many years to come, the Irish people will know to their cost how wrong they were.

With the country up to its eyes in sovereign debt, the best way for Ireland to save billions of euro is by not spending money on projects that society can ill-afford. If these deferred schemes had gone ahead, the nation’s predicament would be even worse than it is.

In spite of the cutbacks, however, the Government is planning to spend €17 billion on capital investment over the next five years. Whether this is sensible or foolhardy will depend largely on whether ominous predictions of a second recession looming in Europe will come to pass. Be that as it may, the Coalition is right to think positively and especially to give priority to school, healthcare and infrastructure projects aimed at creating jobs.

With 70,000 students expected to enter primary and second level education during the next five years, it makes sense to build 20 primary and 20 second level schools plus extensions and refurbishment at 180 existing schools. Considering the importance of education for future generations, it would be preferable if a green light instead of red were given to the Grangegorman DIT single campus project. Arguably, that would be more productive than linking the two Luas lines in the city centre (something that should have been done at the outset anyway) and extending the service to connect with the Maynooth line which already comes into the city centre.

In another sensible initiative, the National Children’s Hospital will partly be funded by a direct payment from the next licence to operate the National Lottery. It is included in a €2 billion health programme along with the National Radiation Oncology Project and the Central Mental Hospital.

As the cliche goes, we are where we are. Unless this government acts with prudence, something will have to give. It is wise to put the DART, prison and Metro projects on ice so that when things improve the schemes can always be revived.

It is better by far that capital infrastructure projects of this kind be postponed than to make damaging cuts in more vital areas, such as a child’s education, because society has only one chance to get that right.