Huge investment to transform the roads between Dublin and other major cities, as well as a major programme to tackle the housing crisis, are among the key elements in the new £40.6 billion national development plan.
The plan for the years 2000-2006, published yesterday, was hailed by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, as "investment on a scale never seen before in our history".
It provides for a 50 per cent increase in spending on infrastructure - up from £2 billion to £3 billion a year. This will fund investment in roads, public transport, housing, water and sewerage.
A central thrust of the plan is to narrow the gap between living standards in different parts of the State, bringing the poorer Border, midland and western (BMW) region up towards the same level of prosperity as the southern and eastern (SE) region. A total of £13,793 per person will be spent in the BMW region during the seven years of the plan, compared to £10,250 in the SE region.
The largest single allocation in the plan is £6 billion for social and affordable housing, which includes 35,000 local authority homes and several thousand houses under other schemes.
A total of £6.3 billion is earmarked for roads, including £4.7 billion for national roads. The plan envisages the main roads between Dublin and Cork, Limerick, Galway, the Border and Waterford being transformed into motorways or dual carriageways. Many other roads will also be upgraded.
Some £2.2 billion is to be spent on public transport. The bulk of it, £1.6 billion, is intended for the greater Dublin area, including £430 million for Luas, £185 million for short-term rail development such as 46 extra DART carriages, £220 million for improved bus services, and £200 million for quality bus corridors and other traffic management initiatives. A sum of £500 million has been set aside for the underground section of Luas in Dublin city centre.
The £10 billion employment and human resources programme is the other main spending area. It includes educational programmes to promote social inclusion, retraining for the unemployed, adult education, back-to-work schemes and other labour market measures.
For the first time, a national plan will be funded almost entirely from the Exchequer with no other money being borrowed. Just over 10 per cent - £4.75 billion - will come from the European Union.
A minimum of £1.9 billion will come from Public Private Partnerships - schemes including private business and the state building major projects.
The Government has set up a special implementation group of senior ministers to try to push the projects through on time and hopes the proposed new planning Bill will also help.
Last night IBEC, the business lobby group, said that the government must aim to have planning permission for all the main projects by next year and must act to ensure court challenges to not derail the timetable.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, yesterday said that by 2006 a combination of the plan's provisions and a new national partnership agreement could ensure there were "no unemployment problems, no financial or fiscal problems and no infrastructural problems".
The plan is based on what the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, called "very realistic" economic assumptions. It assumes that economic growth will average 5 per cent a year over the next six years. This is broadly in line with recent ESRI predictions in the Medium Term Review.
Government and European Commission officials will discuss the plan in the coming weeks before EU approval is given for the parts it will co-fund. The Taoiseach yesterday predicted that these discussions would results in no significant change.
Mr Ahern rejected criticism that the plan had been devised "behind closed doors" with little public debate. "We've gone out and taken on every idea...This is a plan for the people designed and worked on by the people's representatives and for that reason I think the Popeye will support it."