Mr. Peter Walsh:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for their invitation to attend today.

I am joined by my colleague, Mr. Nigel O'Neill, director of capital programme. I understand the committee wishes to discuss the NDP, having regard to Review to Renew, the public consultation. Before I report to the committee on progress in the delivery of the elements of the NDP that TII is responsible for, I will briefly describe the duties assigned to TII through legislation. The National Roads Authority, NRA, operating as TII since 2015, was established under the Roads Act 1993. It is the general duty of the authority to secure the provision of a safe and efficient network of national roads. In 2015, the NRA was merged with the Rail Procurement Agency, RPA, and the Roads Act 2015 added the function of securing the provision of, or providing, such light railway and metro railway infrastructure as may be determined by the NTA. I make the distinction between these two responsibilities of TII to explain why I will provide information to the committee today on national roads projects but that for the MetroLink and Luas light rail projects for which TII is the sponsoring agency I will defer to the NTA as the approving authority.

The national road network is 5,400 km in length, which is approximately 6% of the public road network, but it carries 50% of all traffic and 90% of all goods transported. TII works in partnership with the 31 local authorities, which are roads authorities, to fulfil its duties and the arrangements include 11 national roads offices funded by TII and staffed by the local authorities. In 2018, the NDP mandated the progression of 43 major projects that would address deficiencies in the national road network across 29 local authorities. Since then, three have been completed and a further two have been delivered through a series of minor projects. For the remaining 38 projects I have provided the committee with a booklet that describes each project and gives an update on the progress achieved to date.

The delivery of national road projects is progressing well for the 12 projects that had planning approval in place at the commencement of the plan. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of staff in the Department of Transport, TII, local authorities, national roads offices and civil engineering designers and contractors in achieving this progress. During the past year, contractors have produced and adhered to standard operating procedures that have created and maintained safe working environments. Their achievements in this regard allowed for road construction to recommence on 18 May after a seven-week shutdown. Productivity has been impaired but very significant progress has been achieved, and continues, on these critical transport infrastructure projects.

On the matter of challenges to progress, progression of projects through the planning approval process has become slower in recent years. The time spent in the planning process and the judicial review process has extended the delivery timeline for some projects by several years. The restrictions required to combat the spread of Covid-19 have further interrupted the planning and judicial processes.

I refer to TII’s engagement with the Review to Renew consultation. In response to a request from the Department of Transport, TII made a comprehensive submission in December 2020. The submission included all national road projects in the current NDP. In addition, TII requested that consideration be given to ten projects of regional importance, six bus priority projects which would be developed on the national primary radial roads in the greater Dublin area and four programmes of works to be focused on the national secondary road network. TII has also proposed the development of a national cycleway network to safely connect urban areas.

Finally, TII has recommended four actions by Government to assist in the delivery of a new NDP. They are a commitment to a steady programme of projects, multi-annual funding commitments for steady state investment and projects, measures to achieve shorter timelines for planning and regulatory approvals including faster delivery of judgements in judicial reviews and an allocation of reasonable levels of resourcing to public sector bodies with responsibilities for implementation and statutory and regulatory approval.

I am happy to take questions from members and if I do not have information immediately to hand relating to a question, I will revert back to the committee in writing. I thank the members for their attention.