In an article in the Sunday Independent the Taoiseach set out his vision for the country to 2027. Central to that was the national planning framework which he said would be published shortly. It was a bit of a one for everyone in the audience job which the oldest, cutest Fianna Fáil spin doctor in the past would have said was the right thing to do.

Should we not debate the planning framework before it is published? Will a draft version be published which can then be amended? What is the space for us to have dialogue around the sort of country we are planning? How do we influence the national capital plan? Will the plan be presented, along with the capital plan, with no discussion about the key strategic issues and how we concentrate development in the centre and put sustainability at the heart of everything we do?

That is my concern. We can go into the details of revision but my concern is that the national capital plan and the planning framework will be published and it will be a case of "it is all done" and we will be debating after the fact and will not be able to influence it. This is not the way I thought it was meant to be done. I thought this planning framework would be different and that it would be an iterative process rather than the framework and the capital plan being published and it being a case of, "There you go".

I do not know much about Fianna Fáil spin doctors. I have not had the pleasure of working as closely with them as did the Deputy for five years so perhaps he can educate us. The proposal is that the national planning framework and the ten-year capital plan will be two parts of the same document - that there will be a new national development plan, the national planning framework will be one document and the ten-year capital plan will be the other and they will be published together because it is important that one adheres to the other. There is no point in producing a planning framework that says the country will look like this in 2040 and then producing a capital plan that does not align with that. There has already been public consultation. I understand that there is a procedure in the Dáil under which the national planning framework must be debated and adopted - that is in legislation so there will, of course, be a Dáil debate on it. However, I would not be at all hostile to having an open-ended debate about it in the coming weeks. I think that would be welcome and a good idea.