No apologies have been received. I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of Leinster House in order to participate in public meetings. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

The first item on the agenda is the minutes of the meeting of 21 January, which have been circulated. Are they agreed? Agreed.

Before we move on to correspondence, I want to discuss future meetings. Members will be aware that a delegation from this committee is visiting Tennessee next week at the invitation of Representative Dennis Powers. The committee will visit a number of in-progress and recently completed large-scale infrastructure projects, exchange views with the local state and national representatives in the area of infrastructure, meet the US-Ireland friendship groups, and of course attend the 2026 Tennessee state of the state address, which relates directly to infrastructural delivery. That is like the opening of the state parliament, to use a word people here will understand. This means that with three of us away, there will be no meeting next week.

I am making proposals for the following three meetings. The three suggestions I have are for meetings on 11 February, 18 February and 25 February. We will see which date suits the people involved. I propose we start by dealing with an issue which has been mentioned by a number of people, relating to infrastructure and disability. We would invite the Disability Federation of Ireland and Irish Wheelchair Association to one of those meetings. In another meeting, we will meet the County and City Management Association, because local authorities are directly involved in some of the big projects, and some projects involve a number of local authorities, depending on the scale of the project. We have not met anybody from local government yet. On the other day, I propose a meeting with the Central Statistics Office and the Economic and Social Research Institute. The ESRI in particular is doing population projections. The national development plan goes to 2035. We have to see what the expected population is by then and also a decade later. We all know that the population is increasing and we want to make sure that what we are doing now is futureproofed for decades to come, and that we are not just building something that will be over capacity the day after it opens. We have often seen that. We need to know about population trends. The three groups are the CSO and ESRI, the County and City Management Association, and the Disability Federation of Ireland and Irish Wheelchair Association, for the next three meetings. We have more to come.

I know that just before Christmas or at the start of the new year, we were going through a work plan with many different suggestions. Do we have a finalised copy of that which can be shared?

We will share it.

I cannot remember from that discussion exactly what was put forward, so that would be helpful.

We will recirculate it. This is just for the immediate meetings.

Absolutely. It would just be useful for us to have that so we can all refer back to it.

We did not finalise it but we had it for a basis of discussion. Disability was mentioned by a few people.

Population trends are very important for the planning of anything for the future. Definitely, we will recirculate them.

I know I have talked about it before but I would like to see procurement coming up sooner rather than later. Over the many discussions we have had, there remains a challenge around the proper project management of big infrastructure projects so it would be a good session.

I mention the likes of the GAA and inviting in its representatives. Often, we talk about infrastructure and it is always about the physical infrastructure. We have to move on our conversation a bit. Initially, our first instinct is Uisce Éireann, EirGrid and all those groups but we have to try to extend it. Through the likes of the disability bodies we are doing that to a degree but at the same time we also need to look from a social and sporting point of view. When you think about infrastructure you are talking about-----

Community facilities.

-----community facilities and what is required. The GAA is also monitoring. I have not been doing it with the committees but I know the GAA has done its own demographic report and it sees demographic shifts. In a report it had done, I saw that something like 80% of the population was in this narrow line from Belfast all the way down to Wexford, we will say, and within that boundary, whereas 80% of the clubs were the other side of that line. What the GAA was saying was that it is 20:80 and 80:20 and it had a line. When I am looking at infrastructure I am thinking about the infrastructural development of the country. Those sporting bodies, the IRFU, the FAI or whoever they might be, may have their own thoughts and views on this and how we prepare that. Ultimately, it is just putting a load of houses in individual areas and the infrastructure around it but then nobody has any place to play or, more to the point, we see areas which are crumbling. The sporting bodies are probably looking at it with a different view. They are looking at where we are actually losing our communities potentially. We do hear about that on the rural side. I am living in an area where we have the opposite problem and we need more clubs. When I say clubs, it is not about clubs for the sake of the GAA but clubs for people to play for. It is like Naas town. Once again, I do not want to reference what the GAA has but it is a second club. Ultimately, you need facilities for those places. If the GAA is almost an expert and has done the work on those sorts of things, it would be silly not to lean into it.

We have that and we will include that. Houses cannot just be built without community facilities.

There should be a community element to the work we are doing is what I mean.

Absolutely. Riffing off that a bit, it might be good to invite those people who are experts in planning, town planning and community development in terms of what it takes. There are the sports facilities but there are loads of other facilities we want for our communities. It might be good to have experts come in-----

I mention Traveller accommodation.

Absolutely.

Will members keep the conversation through the Chair because people are trying to hear it?

It would be interesting to have academics in on that piece of community town planning to get the holistic picture. Often, speaking to local authorities, they will say they have a certain amount for a new development and it will have 1,000 to 2,000 new homes in it. They say they will build the roads to those homes but they do not have the funding or the resources to do the sports facilities, the clinic or whatever is needed in addition. It would be really helpful to hear from experts and then see how the Department is taking all those things that really build communities-----

And schools. I know it is different from community but they have-----

No, it is the same.

No, it is the same point. It is social infrastructure.

When we are getting the county managers in, could we talk about that as well because every local authority has-----

I agree. We will agree those three for the next three meetings. As I said, we are having one meeting on disability with the Disability Federation Ireland and the Irish Wheelchair Association and another meeting with city and county managers. Then, we will have a third one in relation to population projections and to see how the national development plan is measuring up to figures that the ESRI is projecting and the CSO. Those are the next three meetings, depending on which can come in. At the next meeting we will go through the Department of public expenditure work programme along with the other comments that have been just mentioned, plus what we had on our agenda before now. The purpose today is just to line up the immediate few meetings we have been talking about. That is fine.

We have two items of correspondence. One is additional information provided by Bord na Móna, or BnM as I should call it, following our meeting on 14 January regarding a press statement issued by BnM in relation to the Bellacorick wind farm decommissioning. A segment of the 16 January "Six One News" covered the decommissioning of the wind farm and the recycling of turbine blades. BnM also advises it will be providing additional information. I propose we wait until we get the information. We just got a comment back on one particular item of correspondence and we will deal with that when we get there, which is the rest of the reply from BnM.

The other item of correspondence received was from EirGrid following our meeting on 14 January. It is in response to EirGrid having the provisions in place to ensure it has sufficient access to the materials, including parts and equipment and obviously skilled labour, for the future building of its power network infrastructure as competition is increasing in the international market for materials. We have a short answer to that. EirGrid says it is still working and we will follow up on the response. I will wait until we get the full response from both organisations. I hope they will be here for the next meeting.

The next item on our agenda is to meet with the Minister, Deputy Chambers. He was in the House up to a few minutes ago but he is expected. We will suspend for a moment while the Minister and officials take their seats.