Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy very much. The infrastructure guidelines were indeed published in December. They had an effective date of 1 January 2024. As a result, they are already in effect. My Department has refreshed the requirements for capital projects in the new infrastructure guidelines, reducing the number of approval stages prior to implementation from five to three and streamlining the requirements for major projects, raising the level of cost at which a project is considered major to €200 million. This allows for projects below this limit to proceed more speedily through the appraisal and evaluation process compared with those of greater scale and complexity. The guidelines also provide clarification regarding the role of Accounting Officers, better reflect the carbon and environment impact of our proposals and reflect changes arising from recommendations put forward by the major projects advisory group. That is just a quick reminder of what they are. They are effective as of the start of this year.

On the Deputy's final point as to when we believe they will be effective, the anecdotal feedback I get from Departments and State agencies is that they are making a difference to the evaluation of projects and the speed at which they move through. As to when we will see the impact they are actually having on the commencement of projects, truthfully it will probably be early next year. It will take some time for this to feed through into projects actually getting the go-ahead to go to tender. With the lead times involved, it will be the early part of next year before we see the difference it is making to the speed at which projects are delivered.

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