In what may well be my last Leaders' Questions in the Dáil, I return to familiar territory, an issue I have raised with the Tánaiste and others many times, namely, the delivery of balanced regional development. I understand that the delivery of a balance of development between regions is not something that can be accomplished overnight, particularly when there are significant gaps. It has to be embedded in all Departments and overseen by a senior Minister with responsibility for co-ordination and delivery. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

The reason I can say this with certainty is that the economic gap between the northern and western region and other regions continues to widen and, very unfortunately, the gap also continues to widen between it and regions across the EU. If any policy is working, we will see at least some impact. That impact has to be visible in some areas of the economy. I will give a few examples to illustrate the failure of current policy with regard to balanced regional development. All the figures produced by the Northern and Western Regional Assembly and Eurostat show that the northern and western region is poorly served in terms of national resources. The most recent figures show that since 2016, just 11% of all national projects worth over €1 million were committed to this region, even though we have 17% of the population. Shamefully, only 5.7% of all national projects worth over €20 million were committed to this region. If we look at housing completions last year, a region with 17% of the population had 11% of housing completions. Look at national and local roads. Our local roads budget for the past ten years has been well below the national average and the national roads budget was one third less than the national average.

Those figures are staggering and they are also accurate. Why has the Government not moved decisively to close that economic gap? What is it proposing to do in the future that is different and will make a real change because balanced regional development is not happening?

I appreciate that the Deputy has been consistent and persistent in addressing the issue of balanced regional development. There are statistics, damned statistics and all the rest.

Oh-----

Hear me out, please. I was in a rural village recently during the local elections. A councillor pointed out to me that the population had gone from about 500 when he went into local government to 2,500 or 3,000, the point being that the place had grown. A lot of rural Ireland has grown in population yet the mantra is a declining rural Ireland. It has elected a lot of Independents to this House.

The Government has led to it.

Somehow the truth is not reconciling here because there has been huge development in many parts of the regions. Equally, there have been big investments in Dublin and other urban areas. Post-Covid, it will be very interesting to see what happens because of the development of remote working, rural working hubs and so on. We are now getting a greater concentration of workers outside cities than ever before, which is adding to rural economies and local economies. Very large infrastructural investments are happening in terms of road developments and third level institutions. Far more needs to happen with public transport but there is a longer lead-in time in terms of rail projects. We have had the all-island rail review but there is a longer lead-in time in terms of that.

We need clarity on roads and the next government and the next programme for government should be very clear on roads in terms of what we want to get done and get it done. That is an issue, although an awful lot has been done. The inflation we spoke about earlier has driven road projects excessively over budget. It is simply because of building materials post-Covid and the energy crisis following Ukraine, which we stabilised.

Over €175 million was spent on the Atlantic Technological University in 2023. Good capital projects are happening there. Under call 3 of the urban regeneration and development fund, €20 million has been allocated to the north west. The Ballaghaderreen to Scramoge road is a huge project. It is significantly over budget before anyone starts roaring, or not roaring but complaining, about it yet everybody wants it. We approved it even though we knew it has gone significantly over what was originally envisaged. The Westport to Turlough road opened in June 2023. Ireland West Airport has been designated as a strategic development zone. We went against all the economists 30 or more years ago when Knock Airport was established so efforts have always been made to go against the grain in respect of investment in the regions. I am committed to investment in the regions and the cities and towns in the regions.

This always happens. The Tánaiste lists a few projects. Of course, I do not dispute that they are happening but he ignores the overall abysmal picture. He ignores the facts and does not deal with them. He does not come back to me and say "Well, Deputy Harkin, actually you are wrong about the completions in housing, wrong about the fact that we do not spend a reasonable amount in the northern and western region and wrong about all the facts that you put before me." He does not do any of that. He talks about a project here and a project there. Of course, he is right but that is the problem. The problem is the mindset that thinks that if the Government can give a bit here and a bit there, that is balanced regional development. It is not. I will give an example.

A half hour ago, I spoke to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, about the strategic rail review. I spoke about the Dublin-Sligo rail line. He talked about the new projects and mentioned balanced regional development twice. He said there were projects in Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick, as well as Dublin. That is the mindset I am speaking about. Until that changes, I or somebody else will be making this argument week after week and month after month in this House and we will not be making progress.

We need to engage on this too. More than 500,000 jobs have been created since this Government took office. Some 75% of those new jobs were created outside Dublin. The mantra for years was that it was all Dublin-based, IDA-created jobs. That is not the case any more. The Government has mandated the IDA to look to secure at least 50% of all new jobs outside of Dublin. Approximately 1,800 IDA-client companies are directly employing more than 300,000 people in Ireland for the second consecutive year. More than half of these are outside Dublin, which demonstrates the scale of the contribution of foreign direct investment, FDI, to Ireland. The whole agenda and policy is to regionalise that FDI footprint throughout the country and provide more jobs in rural and regional Ireland in terms of IDA activity. Investment in the west and Border regions has been consistent over the past five years. Again, employment in counties Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Galway increased by 18% between 2018 and 2022.

Figures do not lie.

No, they do not lie. Jobs are up by 18%. The 3,000 beds provided by the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and the Department of Health are regionally proofed. They are across the entire region. All our training for nurses, due to decisions I took as far back as 2003, is regionalised. We gave the institutes of technology the capacity to train for nursing therapies way back. That is the way to do it.