The Government is set to reject crucial strands of the ESRI review of the National Development Plan after Ministers in the biggest spending Departments swept aside the Taoiseach's praise for the report.
Four senior Cabinet members ignored Mr Ahern's call for careful study of the report by indicating their rejection of the ESRI's calls to downgrade the parts of the development plan in their control.
The ESRI report said the Government's strategy in the plan was broadly correct but it highlighted serious flaws in the management of major projects such as Luas and said radical measures were needed to control housing demand.
Confirmation that senior Ministers had serious reservations came from the Minister for Communications, Mr Dermot Ahern, when he endorsed moves by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, to dismiss the report. "I think Martin Cullen would have articulated the Government's view," he said.
Mr Cullen said on Wednesday that he had "fundamental" problems with the ESRI recommendations on the environment and described aspects of the report as "absolute nonsense".
Mr Dermot Ahern rejected the ESRI's call for the Government to leave investment in broadband technology to the private sector. "To a certain extent maybe they didn't fully understand broadband."
The Ministers' strong stance comes as the Budget Estimates campaign, in which they fight for their Departments' funding next year, enters its final phase.
A key recommendation that hospital beds closed because of funding problems should be reopened before there is investment in new beds was also rejected.
The official spokeswoman for the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said: "We're committed to the Health Strategy. That's 3,000 beds in the lifetime of the strategy, 10 years. We're working towards that." The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, has also expressed reservations. He is understood to be rejecting the call to consider downgrading the standard of roads on lesser-used routes earmarked for motorway standard. This was described by one source as a "big issue" for Mr Brennan.
The Taoiseach insisted yesterday he would not dismiss the review. He described it as "a good report" containing positive and negative points, which should not be ignored. While he accepted that Ministers had debated "fairly hotly" some of the issues, he said, in an apparent reference to the Cabinet, that "we should be big enough to take some criticism".
However, he rejected the ESRI's call to examine the possibility of a property tax on second homes. "We're unlikely to go down that road again," he said. "It didn't prove workable."
The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said the Government and individual Ministers would reflect on the conclusions in determining investment priorities.
The report was published as signs emerged of an improvement in economic prospects at home and abroad. The Central Statistics Office reported that the economy grew at a much faster than expected rate in the second quarter of 2003. Seasonally-adjusted GNP rose by 3.1 per cent year-on-year compared with growth of just 1 per cent in the first three months of the year.
Consumer spending underpinned the performance, growing 2.1 per cent in the period with signs of improvement in other areas.
However, a report on global competitiveness showed that Ireland had slumped to 30th, a fall of 19 places in the past two years.
