 Good afternoon everybody, you're very welcome to the Institute of International European Affairs. We're delighted to have Robert Watt here, Secretary-General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, who talked about the National Development Plan. Before we get started, just a few housekeeping notes to let you know that you're very welcome to tweet using at IIA, but please do put your phones on to silent. We are also under Chatham House Rules in the Q&A, but the opening remarks are on the record. So Robert will speak for approximately 15 minutes, and then it's open to the floor, so any questions you have, identify yourself and try and keep it to a question, if possible. So with that, please give a warm welcome to Robert Watt, thank you very much. Well thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here at the Institute once again, to talk about what I hope will be an interesting discussion and conversation. So what I'm going to assume is that everybody in this room has read the project of 2014, the Development Plan, and the Sean Wheeler from RT certainly has, because he told me he has, and the Spatial Plan. So I'm not going to go through all the details of this, but maybe just try to talk about some of the key issues arising from it and some of the key implementation issues, and I'm going to maybe talk for 15-20 minutes and maybe allow more time for debate and questions, because I think the real issue here is the challenge of delivering implementation, and I'm really interested in getting people's perspectives and engaging on what those issues are. If I think about the two most pressing issues, short term, immediate issues for us, the Department and Government will be around Brexit, managing the issues around Brexit, and managing the strong growth in the economy that we have, sustaining the recovery, avoiding the boom both cycles of the past, and dealing with the attendant implications of this economy that's growing very quickly, whether it's transport congestion or housing or other issues, and an awful lot of our focus is on these issues around short term issues or responding to issues which are more immediate. I guess the key longer term issue in terms of the issue which is going to define our ability to prosper, our competitiveness, living standards of our people, and the quality of life is our ability to deliver a proper spatial and infrastructure plan for the country, and I focus on that issue of spatial because I don't think it's a radical statement or something which is overly critical of people who come in the past addressing these issues, is that when it comes to land use and spatial issues, we just haven't been very good in Ireland for whatever reasons, and we can talk about it, is it? Can we blame the planners? People always blame the planners, or blame the architects, or blame Colin McCarthy maybe, or blame the politicians, whoever, whoever, whatever, we just haven't been good at it. And if you believe the demographers, or even if you don't believe the demographers, if you broadly believe that population will increase and the number of homes that we require will increase, the sort of central forecast is an extra million people between now in 2045 and an extra 500,000 homes. So if you look at the challenges that we have now in terms of the pressure and infrastructure, where are we going to build these homes? Where are people going to live? And that is the central medium term, longer term challenge that we face. And as I see it, and as those of us Irish Civil Service who are charged with this, as we see it as quite a simple choice, that we can continue with what has been an unplanned, uncoordinated urban sprawl in Dublin, and planning failures elsewhere around our main towns and cities. With an overly dominant Dublin, which now accounts for 40% of activity population employment, we can go with a continuation of that model, or we can have a different approach, which is one which moves to more compact city form, one which avoids urban sprawl, and one which tries to develop other growth cities, cities that can be counterweight to Dublin. In other words, can we grow Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, in a way where they can actually be competing against Dublin or be counterweight to the growth of Dublin. And we see that, in essence, been the policy decision that we face. Do we want to continue with an effect uncoordinated urban sprawl with declining city centres and massive computing patterns, but all of that, or do we want to go for a different approach? And we are in the age of cities, so when we talk about the challenges we face here, these are the challenges that many other countries, developed countries, and emerging economies are facing too. It's interesting to think about it, 2% of the landmass of the world is taken up by cities. The latest figures in the World Bank 2016 numbers, I saw 53% of the population of the world now live in cities, 70% of the emissions are produced in cities, 85% of economic activity is of the cities. So, when we're talking about how our economy will prosper in the future, a lot of it depends on our ability to make our cities work effectively. And people will remember, of course, that cities in the past grew due to the proximity to natural resources, to water, to coal, iron ore. But now cities are successful if they can attract people. Are they attractive places for people to live? And if cities are attractive, then businesses will be attracted to those places and will prosper. And increasingly cities, of course, in an Irish context, are regional drivers of growth, that the success of a region in the future will depend on the ability of the regional centre to grow, and that will be a pull on other parts of the region. So, cities need systems that work. They need to be empathetic, but they need to be efficient. They need to combine different aspects of their history, public spaces. Lots of different aspects that combine to make cities work. And we all have examples of cities that we think work and cities that we think don't work. And in Irish case, I think it's fair to say that our largest failure is in relation to our failure to integrate housing, land use and transport. So, those parts of our cities, those systems, the transport housing systems, don't work. And how can we then in the future grow to avoid the urban sprawl that's characterised and developed in the last 20, 30 years? There's an enormous amount of recent research from the World Bank, and some people will be interested in looking at this, which looks at now the costs of urban sprawl. And we think about it in terms of commuting patterns and what that means for quality of life and lost productivity, but increasingly emissions, an incredible amount of emissions related to obviously car-based commuting, but also higher cost of infrastructure and higher cost of public services. So, if we go out as opposed to have higher density form, it does increase the cost of infrastructure provision and does increase the cost of public services. And particularly in the context of our demographic issues, population ageing, we're living longer, the cost of social care, the cost of community-based care, hospital care, and so on increases enormously with sprawl. So, there are a whole variety of reasons which we need to do differently. So, Project 2040 tries to link land use and infrastructure for the first time. So, we believe that this is a radical departure from where we've been in the past. The Late Show, one for everybody in the audience, is not a feature of this plan. It is a different type of plan. I won't go through the details because everybody's read it, but some of the key aspects are 50% of the growth will be in the five cities, 75% of the growth outside of Dublin, significant growth focusing on brown-filled sites within the old metropolitan course within those five areas, and a very clear statement in relation to compact form, higher densities, and of course, higher densities around transport hubs. And when we talk about higher densities, it doesn't necessarily mean eight-story-high apartment blocks or 20-story-high apartment blocks. It can mean different types of developments which have higher densities than the traditional terraced house or a semi-attached house that we had in the past. So, there are many different ways of considering this. But a sustainable form is one which requires much higher density around existing transport hubs and proposed transport hubs that are part of the plan. How do we deliver this? And I guess this is the issue that I think is really the issue of debate or for discussion, Barry. How can we move from what is an unsustainable model to a more sustainable model? The first issue is that we are developing spatial plans locally within the metropolitan areas and the regions which should be consistent with the national planning goals that we've set out, and they're in preparation now. And that'll be the real first test of whether this is a serious document which we're going to implement in a serious way or we're going to try and have a fudge. And that will involve the local authorities coming together with plans which are consistent with the overall plans. Second element of delivering is for us to relate the capital spending to support sustainable development only. And this is why it's important that we actually have the spatial plan and our tenure capital plan aligned. So, in effect, the government has said that it will not support enabling infrastructure for developments which it does not believe are sustainable. So, the government provides significant funds in terms of cleaning sites, enabling works to facilitate development. Most of it's funded, 8, 9% is funded centrally. And so, the policy is that only developments which are consistent with the principal set out will receive funding. And that will have an impact hopefully on terms of the direction implementation of this plan. Key issue is around prioritising public transport and higher densities along those transport hubs. We believe that fiscal incentives have a very significant role in encouraging better land use. And it's interesting to look around this city at inappropriate development, whether it's very low rise residential or it is low industrial use which is alongside very significant public transport investments. I'll just mention one example which is well known, the Nace Road, where for two or three kilometres along the Nace Road, the Lewis line as you come in, there's very little residential development. It's all motor showrooms and other facilities. There's in Glasnevon beside Broomridge train stations also a very significant industrial estate there. So, there is a real challenge for us in terms of using incentives, fiscal incentives and other incentives to ensure that land usage is appropriate and that land is consistent with the development of the transport hubs that we're setting out. There is, we believe, a much greater role for a more activist land use approach through the development agency and the government has agreed to establish a development agency. And that development agency will in the first instance identify public lands, lands which are held within central government departments, the HSC, central government agencies and say, well, are they suitable for higher density housing? Are they located along transport hubs? Are they located in places where we should have different use? And over time it's envisaged that this agency would have a much more activist approach, not just in relation to public lands but also private lands and look at taking over parcels of lands to get critical mass and scale which then provide a basis for development. And when we look at successful developments, I think our own experience with the docklands regeneration, controversial I know in some respects towards the end of its time, but did a fantastic job in regenerating the docks north and south. If you look at other examples in countries, King's Cross development in London which we're familiar with, other examples where we do need agencies mandated to have a much more active approach in terms of using land. I think there are a whole variety of other issues in terms of sensible debate on densities. I think we're getting into a better discussion about what that means. It's around car parking spaces. Up until recently, apartments had to have a car parking space for each apartment in order to get planning permission. To mention the development in King's Cross in London, I think there are 8,000 residential units and there are 17 car parking spaces and there are disabled car parking spaces. It is now the norm within cities that car parking spaces would not be provided for new developments. So again, there are policy changes which we need to stick with to ensure that we develop an urban form which is consistent with higher densities. There is of course a bigger question around how do we deal with inappropriate development developments that we don't think are appropriate. The role of the Centre, the Department of Housing, the Minister for Housing in saying that proposed development by that local authority is not consistent and the Minister has powers in the 2009 Planning Act to say that permission is not granted for that and it might become in the future where there has to be a much more activist approach by the Centre and by the Minister of Government to ensure that only planning which is appropriate is a bit. There's a wider issue, an issue for debate around the need for putting a boundary around cities, a limit, a green belt, something which I think we have debated here, there are elements of it around parts of Dublin, but whether there's a need for us to actually have a physical limit of boundary and to discourage, to stop development outside that and to obviously encourage development within that boundary, that green belt. And that's a very controversial issue which I don't think I haven't heard much debate recently but I think it's something that we need to discuss and need to debate. Broadly in London it's been there since the late 30s, I think mid 40s broadly seen as successful, they're positive, they're negative, but if we want to move to a different type of form of development, a more compact form, then it's certainly an issue that we need to address. Just to maybe finish on a few final points, and I have a presentation I haven't got to yet, but that'll loop on the website, people can look, people who haven't read the plan can read the slides, Sean, but there are a few other issues around the use of infrastructure and the use of infrastructure more sensibly. So I live in Drumcondra and I come into work very early being a diligent civil servant, but when I'm late, when I'm late for work from between quarter to eight and about 20 past eight, 25 past eight, increasingly the buses are full and you can't get on the buses and I guess that's now a pattern you see across the city. A few months ago I got on, I managed to get on the bus 10 past eight, quarter past eight and there's a pal of mine sitting there, Paddy and he's a seat and I'm chatting to Paddy, how are you going on Paddy? You haven't seen him for a while, what are you, I'm heading into town, he said I'm going to go to Kenny's shop and I'm going to meet a friend for a bit of brunch and stuff. Paddy is 82 and Paddy had his free bus pass and got on the bus for free when all the the mortgage slaves are there trying to get on the bus paying their their two euros 15 and a leave card and a two euro 70 if you don't have your your leave card. Now this isn't a criticism of existing policy because I'm not allowed to criticize government policies as I'm a civil servant, Sean, but you know there are there are issues, there are issues about enabling people to access public transport for free at p-times and my friends, my friends and I will say that about somewhere between five, six, seven percent of people actually will will use it at those p-times. So there are things around how we how we how we price, how we use infrastructure. I think there is an issue about the poor tunnel, about the pricing of the poor tunnel, about you know could you actually price that in a different way to incentivize people to use that p-times infrastructure more generally. So we always focus on the need to increase the capacity of networks but there's a significant issue around how we manage demand, how we manage demand at peak and the role of pricing in that. Well I'll say about the plan it's 10 years, it's set out, we've set out allocations across departments but of course it's a it's a flexible plan. Some of those projects we've set out, those timeframes won't be met, other projects will have to will have to have to slot in. So what we're trying to do and this is issues that industry comes to us all the time about is to have a pipeline of projects so that we can provide that certainty for for the sector and that's I think an other important element of what we're trying to do is that we've actually set out the allocations for 10 years, a longer period, than we would have in the past. A real big issue for us is the ability that for us to deliver value for money given the capacity constraints that are now within the economy and if we are going to continue to increase capital spending and build the additional homes that we need to build that's going to have implications for other things that we want to do. There was some debate this morning in DSRI suggesting what that means for budgetary policy but we can't do everything. Not all sectors can grow at the types of rates that each of those sectoral interests would like and if we're going to create space for capital spending to address our housing issues it's going to have implications for other other things that we would like to do or invest in or spend and we need to we need to be mindful mindful of that. I think there is a question about delivery mechanisms and we've set up this delivery board, bring together the different groups we're setting up a construction group and we're cascading down from the national space and plan down to those local plans but we do have an open mind on the state's ability what other mechanisms need to put in place to ensure that we can actually deliver on this plan that reaches around the planning system we've debated this the capacity of the planning system the capacity of the sector more generally and maybe I'll finish on on this note I think many cases and failures in Irish public policy or failures of implementation arise not from having the wrong policy but that we fail to implement because we allow sexual interests or vested interests to override and maybe that's the biggest risk here that we need to ignore the noise ignore the developers who absolutely want to build that piece of land or ignore various people who are focusing on their interests which aren't consistent with the public interest and that's why we need I think strong administrative leadership and strong political leadership to stay focused on what is the public interest and we think what's in the public interest for our country is to deliver a capital plan and a spatial plan along the principles that we've set it thank you