What's new in the plan:Commitments on social inclusion, housing and an additional €11 billion in capital expenditure are two of the main elements in the National Development Plan that had not been previously announced by Government Ministers.
There is also a new "all-island economy" investment commitment in the plan, although the Government has yet to identify the amount of investment involved.
However the bulk of the €184 billion in spending commitments under the plan were already promised under different sectoral plans, agreements and other commitments published by Government departments in the past 12 years.
Yesterday the Taoiseach acknowledged many of the commitments had been already announced but said the main element of the plan was that it represented an "integration" of proposals into one coherent strategy. A spokeswoman for Mr Ahern added that the plan was different to its predecessor.
"It's very unlike the National Development Plan we had before," she said. "It's not a project-by-project breakdown. It's a much bigger and more visionary document."
One of the main new commitments is the earmarking of €21 billion for social and affordable housing to 140,000 families. This includes previous promises of more than 40,000 units under the latest social partnership agreement, Towards 2016, and its predecessor in 2003, when the Government promised 10,000 additional affordable homes, almost all of which have yet to be built.
The vast majority of the €12 billion spending on other social infrastructure will be on projects already announced by the Government, including hospitals, sports facilities such as Lansdowne Road, and criminal justice facilities such as the replacement prison for Mountjoy jail.
Spending of €29 billion on older people and people with disabilities is a new figure in itself, but the programmes it will be spent on were already committed to by Government.
The €12 billion earmarked for childcare places and facilities is in order to implement a package of measures announced in the 2006 budget.
The plan commits just over €32 billion for transport infrastructure, but all of this money was already announced by the Government in its Transport 21 plan, published in October 2005. This includes the extension of the Luas light rail network, the Dublin Metro, and the completion of motorways and dual carriageways between Dublin and Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick.
A majority of the €20 billion in enterprise, science and innovation spending announced in the plan has already been committed to by the Government.
The €20 billion includes €6 billion in science, technology and innovation, already announced by the Department of Enterprise. The €8 billion announced for agriculture and food development was already outlined in a 10-year plan for the sector back in 2005.
The plan also includes a recommitment of the Government to the National Spatial Strategy, published more than four years ago but which has yet to be implemented in any significant way by Government departments.
Unlike the last plan, there is also a new commitment to have a monitoring system to establish whether the targets of the plan are being met and whether it achieves value for money.