Mr. Kenneth Spratt:

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to discuss the review of the national development plan, NDP. As he will know, today's Cabinet meeting had a delayed start time and the Minister, Deputy Ryan, thought it better that I attend the committee meeting to ensure members are updated on the review of the NDP. The Minister sends his apologies and is happy to appear before the committee at the earliest opportunity.

I am joined by my colleagues, whom the Chairman has named, and I confirm that we are all present on the grounds of Leinster House. We are in the one room but appropriately socially distanced. I am not joined by any colleagues from the Minister's other Department, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. I will try to help as much as I can on matters pertaining to that Department but I may have to revert on some matters the committee may wish to raise relating to it.

A review of the NDP is timely in view of the events that have taken place, and which are still taking place, since its launch in 2018. As part of the review, the specific remit given to the Department of Transport was to examine the Department’s NDP investment plans in the light of the new programme for Government, the completion of regional spatial and economic strategies, climate action commitments and the impacts of Brexit and Covid-19. The review is broad and wide-ranging.

To be successful, a transport development plan needs to have a clear focus on long-term goals but must also be flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. The national development plan, which is built around outcomes rather than specific projects, gives us the necessary flexibility and adaptability. The primary focus of the NDP is to absorb the estimated 1 million additional citizens who will live in this country by 2040 and to cater for everyone in a sustainable manner. Our Department’s priorities are to ensure investment is geared to support the mobility needs of an increasing population, to decarbonise public transport, and to provide appropriate supports and incentives in decarbonising the private transport element of the economy. There is an excellent opportunity in the review of the NDP to accelerate decarbonisation of the transport sector and pivot strongly towards compact growth targets while also building on the progress made to date on improving regional connectivity. I look forward to engaging with the committee today on these interlinked ambitions for transport.

Our Department’s submission examines the NDP at a policy level to identify revised strategic priorities rather than entering into a discussion of particular projects. The submission is underpinned by the draft national investment framework for transport in Ireland, NIFTI, which replaces the strategic investment framework for land transport, which had been in place since 2016. The primary purpose of the NIFTI will be to support, in a cost-effective and evidence-based manner, the attainment of the national strategic outcomes set out in the national planning framework.

The NIFTI sets out principles, priorities, and an evidence-based framework to inform transport investment decision-making. It sets out our four unranked priorities for transport: decarbonisation, protection and renewal, enhanced regional accessibility, and the sustainable mobility of people and goods in urban areas. These unranked priorities, which I emphasise are all of equal priority, are accompanied by modal and intervention hierarchies to assist in project identification and sequencing and in comparing projects across different transport modes. They are not, however, a substitute for the existing decision-making processes in themselves.

In shaping the Department’s budget and investment strategy, our focus will be on ensuring that Ministers have the support and resources they need to focus on delivering the national planning framework’s national strategic outcomes, particularly where climate change, land use and transport integration are concerned. The research makes it clear that the most productive strategy the Department can pursue, when the goal is to absorb sustainably a rapidly growing population, is to expand sustainable mobility capacity within our major cities and towns.

This primary goal of compact growth inherently complements three other key national strategic outcomes: sustainable mobility; high quality international connectivity; and transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient society. The mantra of this is first and foremost that we must redouble our efforts to improve the mobility of people and goods within cities, and within towns and villages.

What does compact growth mean in practice when combined with sustainable mobility ambitions? For areas with poor transport connectivity, it may mean adapting existing rail networks to open up neighbouring land banks, and properly integrating housing and land use. It may mean retrofitting roads to implement improved bus services, to provide a fast, reliable, comfortable and sustainable bus and associated cycle network in our major cities and towns. It means that roads are not built just to deliver private vehicle traffic but are evaluated for public transport and active travel capabilities too. Road design and retrofitting will be focused on moving several modes of transport, including cycling and walking, not just on moving cars.

We will improve sustainable access to our city centres. It is very possible this will move away from intense nine to five rush hour peaks to smaller peaks and sustained all-day use, due to the acceleration of remote working during the pandemic. We will align investment to encourage the concept of 15-minute neighbourhoods, so that it will be possible to safely walk or cycle to school, to the shops, or nearby places of employment in the largest cities and smallest urban settlements without relying on a private car. We will improve access to our international gateway airports and ports, which are all located in large conurbations. We will replace our public transport petrol and diesel fleets with low emission vehicle fleets.

As we increase population densities within cities and towns, we will continue to reinforce the need for more efficient inter-urban connections between our towns and cities, and provide the population base and density to develop improved high-quality inter-urban road and rail connections for passengers and freight. We will attract business investment and create jobs as we will have the population densities and ready-made work force to support businesses and enterprise. Rural transport between towns and villages will increasingly become more viable, with key pick-up and drop-off points along the way.

Decarbonisation is of overriding importance right across Government. It is clear decarbonisation, while rightfully seeking to arrest and redress climate change, has become an industrial revolution in its own right. It is as profound as the move from coal and steam power to oil and petrol power. It is about the most productive use of energy. Historically, industrial revolutions were the biggest drivers of productivity. When linked to open trade, they are responsible for increasing living standards in an economically sustainable manner.

The end of a primary energy system which is heavily reliant on fossil fuels is in sight. If we do not pursue sustainable technologies and a sustainable State, and devote significant public resources to this end, we will find ourselves steadily sliding down international productivity and economic rankings sooner rather than later. We will be overtaken by more enterprising countries and lose touch with developments within the EU. We have a duty of care and binding legal commitments as a country to manage our share of the biosphere, to stabilise climate change and mitigate the damage being done by carbon and other polluting emissions.

How will all of this be financed? The scale required to achieve our ambitions will be significant. The most important challenge is, perhaps, not how much we invest, but how we invest it. Our main concerns at this point are as follows: to support our Ministers in ensuring our investment strategy for transport is broadly aligned with the national planning framework, NPF, and the draft national investment framework for transport in Ireland, NIFTI; to support our Ministers in ensuring that within our investment strategies decarbonisation ambitions are built into every aspect of them; to ensure decarbonisation ambitions are measurable and quantifiable; and to ensure that at an executive level our programme governance and selection processes are robust, that they are risk managed in such a way as to identify the right projects, and that they accurately estimate and tightly manage the costs and delivery time frames of these projects.

A key task for me is to work with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform during phase 2 of the national development plan, NDP, review to ensure the budget and the capital ceilings for the next five to ten years of project delivery are broadly in line with the cost estimates of projects which we expect to come on stream over this period. At a figure of €2.5 billion for 2021, the present base level of the budget is very good, on paper. However, there are three extremely important caveats to this. The first is that we only reached this level within the last two budgets after a decade in which we invested far below the rate required commensurate with the growth in population and economy. We are, therefore, playing catch-up.

The second caveat is that the annual required baseline share of the budget for protection and renewal of our road and rail networks, which involves the maintenance of assets at a level where they do not deteriorate, is around €1 billion. In practice, this reduces the allocation available for investment in network expansion.

The third caveat is that we know in its present published form the capital budget is not enough to deliver the planned investment programmes coming down the tracks. When we enter discussions on capital ceilings for the next five to ten years, the way in which we address these three caveats will be instrumental in determining the right capital ceilings for network improvement and expansion.

Turning to the main NDP item at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, the national broadband plan, NBP, together with continued investment by commercial telecommunications operators is creating a more digitally connected Ireland. The national broadband plan will ensure that no premises, regardless of how remote it is, will be left without this vital service. Economic growth, jobs and competitiveness, balanced regional development, social inclusion, and environmental protection are all supported by high speed and robust telecommunications networks, which also provide a more equitable and sustainable future allowing rural communities to avail of the opportunities presented by the digital economy.

Data from the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, published late last year showed a year-on-year increase of more than 80,000 subscriptions to fibre-to-the-premises broadband services in Ireland in 2020. This is clear evidence of the demand Irish consumers have for high-capacity connectivity once these services are available. The pace of growth in data usage is set to continue which reinforces the need for high-speed, high-capacity infrastructure. The need for access to high-speed broadband by all people has never been clearer. Recognising this, the programme for Government specifically commits to seek to accelerate the roll out of the national broadband plan. Work is under way to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of the NBP roll-out to establish the possibility of bringing forward premises which are currently scheduled in later years of the current plan to an earlier date. Any change requires detailed technical, commercial and financial analysis.

I hope my remarks have thrown some light on our thinking within the Department of Transport on the review of the NDP. I look forward to providing members with as many answers to their questions as I can over the coming couple of hours.