The launch: The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has indicated that he favours a new outer ring road for Dublin. This would form part of a large infrastructure package to be built over the next 15 years to deal with projected population growth.
Speaking at the sod-turning of Adamstown, a new town in west Dublin, Mr Ahern said the Government would have to begin planning 15 years in advance.
Adamstown, which will eventually be home to 20,000 people when completed, is the first strategic development zone in the State.
This is a partnership between developers, local authorities and Government agencies, on housing and infrastructure.
The first phase of the €2 billion development got under way last month, when construction began on the first phase of 340 houses.
The town is being built by three companies, Castlethorn Construction, Maplewood Homes and Tierra Ltd. They have formed a fourth company, Chartridge Developments, to build infrastructure such as roads and other services for the 500-acre site.
The new town has been in the planning stage since 2001, when the Government announced a strategic development zone for the site. The developers have been working closely with planners from South Dublin County Council on it since.
Castlethorn, which owns 60 per cent of the site, had been in negotiations with the other developers, South Dublin County Council, and the Department of the Environment about the site throughout the late 1990s.
The zone, which was approved by An Bord Pleanála in 2003, allows for the fast-track planning of buildings and services on the site. When completed it will include a train station and a large commercial town centre.
However, locals in nearby Lucan are concerned about the lack of transport infrastructure, including road and rail, for the estimated population.
Reacting to those concerns, Mr Ahern said the Government was committed to delivering transport infrastructure.
Asked if he favoured a new outer Dublin ringroad to replace the M50, which will not be able to deal with projected traffic increases, he said he believed the projected population growth demanded it.
"The demographic figures are there, we're talking about moving to a population of five million." Although there was a national spatial strategy, the Government had to be realistic about the fact that "people do want to live in the Greater Dublin Area".
Mr Ahern also said he hoped the Adamstown plan would be a model for future developments, and acknowledged that previous residential development in the country had often failed to deliver proper infrastructure and services such as schools and shops.
"This is a long development. It's not just about building houses, it's not piecemeal," he said. "It's strategically planned out with the resources to go in tandem as it goes on with housing.
"It will, hopefully, prove to be the way we should do things, where you look at a long-term view," he said.
Mr Joe O'Reilly, managing director of Castlethorn Construction, said the delivery of all of the services, such as schools and the railway station, would need the co-operation of various State agencies, including Irish Rail and the Department of Education, and that he was confident this could be done.
"Adamstown is truly unique both in its scale and precedent for this country. This is not just a development of new homes This is a new community, a town in the making, master-planned in the greatest possible detail, from the ground up."