The news that the Attorney General is examining the feasibility of a special court designed to speed up the planning process is welcome.

It will be some time before the practical impact of the AG's plan, in which part of the High Court may be designated to deal with planning issues, can be assessed. However, it is an encouraging sign of the Government's determination to unblock a cumbersome and desperately slow-moving planning process. This is the kind of initiative which is required if the Government is to deliver on the proposals in the National Development Plan.

All citizens should enjoy a democratic right to object to a development which might damage the quality of life. However, the overuse of judicial review and other legal mechanisms, even by parties who are not even directly affected by the proposed development, is delaying major infrastructural projects. These are required, urgently, to serve the economic and social needs of the wider society.

The large increase in funds available for the infrastructure programmes in the National Plan will strain the capacity of the civil engineering industry and could overload the planning process.

The Planning and Development Bill, 1999, now before the Oireachtas, addresses some of the issues, but delivery of projects on time and budget will require active supply-side management. The use of a special court may be precisely what is required.

As regards the plan generally, the main investment measures have been well leaked and there are few surprises.

There is to be a strong emphasis on infrastructure investment, particularly in roads, public transport, water and waste treatment. An ambitious target has been set for the involvement of private finance through public-private partnerships in this element of the plan.

Human resources will attract roughly the same commitment of funds as in the last (1994 to 1999) plan, reflecting the jobs boom and a lesser need for remedial labour market interventions.

STRAIGHT State aid to the productive sector of the economy is, perhaps surprisingly, set to rise, although by considerably less than infrastructure investment. The productive sector is aided through capital grants, State agency support and the R & D budget.

Back in 1993, when the last plan was envisaged, the corporate sector in the State faced a far more difficult environment than is now the case. In the period since profits have improved, borrowing costs have fallen and the trading outlook is stronger.

In these circumstances, an increase in State assistance was not recommended in the studies undertaken before the drafting of the new plan.

A significant element in the increased funding proposed under this heading relates to RTDI (Research, Technological Development and Innovation), which is set to receive around £278 million per annum over the next seven years, or a total of almost £2 billion. This will be channelled through third-level institutes, State research organisations and private firms. It represents an enormous commitment of public funds.

The State is divided into two main regions for the purposes of the plan, the Southern and Eastern region, deemed to be the more prosperous, and the BMW region, denoting Border, Midlands and West.

For the purposes of industrial grants, up to 40 per cent will be paid in the BMW region, but the ceiling is 20 per cent elsewhere, falling to 17.5 per cent in Dublin city and county.

Yet the BMW region includes various midlands and north-eastern towns which are close to Dublin. These include Drogheda, Mullingar and Portlaoise. On the face of it, these areas will be entitled to the same treatment as remote parts of the west.

The disparities within the two regions, in terms of infrastructure endowment and economic and social problems, are far greater than any differences between them. It is important that policy be discriminating within, as well as between, these rather unnatural regions.

The plan, perhaps inevitably, concentrates on capital projects. Yet many of the problems it addresses, e.g. congested infrastructures, will also require economic policy actions of another kind, particularly tax/subsidy and other pricing measures.

Urban traffic congestion, for example, will never be amenable to solutions consisting solely of concrete and steel.

The plan notes that the numbers at work have risen at 5 per cent per annum in recent years. This, combined with productivity rising at about 3 per cent, has created overall GDP growth rates of 8 per cent, an unprecedented boom.

The plan acknowledges that this cannot last. It expects output to grow at about 5.4 per cent and, by implication, if productivity rises by 3 per cent, the numbers at work would grow 2.4 per cent per year over the next seven years.

HOWEVER, the natural increase in the labour force is beginning to fall away. According to the ESRI, it will be 27,000 next year, but will drop to only about half that figure in seven years' time, and to zero in about 15 years.

The labour market is already tight, and there is limited scope to reduce unemployment further. The dramatic fall in unemployment has been a key source of the workers who have fuelled the boom. Female labour participation has also risen sharply and is now comparable to other northern European countries in the younger age groups.

Both of these sources of labourforce growth, so important in the 1990s, look less promising in the decade ahead. The implication is that inward migration will be increasingly necessary.

The plan is silent on this key question: where are the workers going to come from? No doubt next month's Budget, in its tax and social welfare measures, will reveal more about the Government's intentions.

Finally, the economic success of the last six years is attributed in the plan in large part to the success of the partnership pay agreements. During the three years of the expiring agreement, public service pay rose 28.3 per cent. For next year, the Government has already conceded that there will be a further rise of 10.4 per cent.

Thus, the public service pay bill for 2000 will be 41.7 per cent above the 1996 figure before any more special claims are awarded. This is the rock that the new-found competitiveness of the Irish economy will perish on.