The Labour Party has called for an electrified rail line between Galway and Dublin and the development of rail links between Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Clare and Limerick as part of its strategy to "reconnect the west".
It also proposes to develop the enormous potential of existing villages and small towns in the region through a "clustering" approach to public transport and an extension of communications. The Labour spokesman on the environment and local government, Mr Eamon Gilmore, has also outlined a series of other measures as part of the party's "radical vision to end western disadvantage".
Labour recently became the first political party to publish a spatial plan, treating the island as a single entity. It has also published an alternative strategy for waste management. During the last local elections it pushed for an integrated transport initiative for Galway and its region and gave a preliminary sketch of a light-rail system as part of its proposals.
The policy documents are based on the premise that the population will increase to about five million, with about seven million people on the island as a whole over the next quarter-century. To meet this increase, more than 500,000 new dwellings will be required in the next decade, with a corresponding increase in infrastructure and economic development.
Mr Gilmore believes development on this scale needs to be based on "a coherent national vision", which avoids the mistakes of "bad, ad-hoc planning over the past 30 years".
Central to the party's strategy is good public transport and the extension of the broadband network to every corner of Ireland. To put it in context, he says that delivering the broadband network on a universal basis in the 21st century is the equivalent of "bringing running water and electricity to every house".
The strategy calls for motorway-standard roads linking Galway to Sligo, Derry and Belfast to the north, and Limerick, Cork and Waterford to the south, as part of a new link around the island.
It also supports a motorway/dual carriageway road between Galway and Dublin, which is planned by this Government. It is seeking the upgrading of the electricity network in the west to attract industry, and the development of a gas network to take advantage of the Corrib field off Mayo.
It believes a national housing strategy is required to guarantee sufficient, affordable housing for people in the west, and seeks to build on the strengths of existing small and medium-sized communities.
These towns and villages "already have the schools, shops, churches and community facilities which are part of any good community," Mr Gilmore says. "It makes no sense to allow those facilities to decline in towns and villages, and then to spend millions of pounds and years of effort trying to replicate them in new, sprawling suburbs."
Details of the strategy were to have been presented by Mr Gilmore, a former junior minister, at a public meeting in Galway at the weekend, but the gathering was cancelled due to the foot-and-mouth crisis.
In a statement issued in tandem with the party's western plan, the Galway West TD and former minister, Mr Michael D. Higgins, said it was a "fundamental disgrace" that local authority housing applicants were being told, for the first time since the 1970s, that they would not be offered accommodation for at least five years.