Mr. David Moloney:

I thank the Chair and committee for the invitation to attend today. We look forward to a fruitful discussion with the committee. I am accompanied by my colleagues, Mr. Kevin Meaney, who will drive the review of the national development plan due in July. Ms Connors is in charge of the housing Vote, Ms Ivory is in charge of the transport Vote and Mr. Cleary will drive the measures to drive accelerated infrastructure over the coming months. We are in the middle of a substantial and significant national development plan. A total of €65 billion has been spent to date and more than €15 billion will be spent on the national development plan, NDP, this year, four times the level of investment only ten years ago. That has delivered a significant amount of infrastructure, including roads, schools, houses, hospitals and more to improve the lives of people in Ireland. We recognise the existing infrastructure deficits based on our historically low infrastructure in the economy.

The recent programme for Government undertook to do a an NDP review, which will be completed by the end of July, led by the Department. It will encompass all public capital investment. As has been well signalled, it will include moneys up to just under €20 billion from a variety of named sources. In line with the programme for Government, the review will in particular support increased capital investment in housing, prioritising growth-enhancing infrastructure such as energy, water, transport and health digitalisation. The Government set out an ambition to build 300,000 housing units by 2030 which will be the priority in the review, in addition to our international competitiveness. We will have a public consultation on that, which I expect to commence in May, to enable all stakeholders to contribute. Bearing in mind there are some significant priorities in the review as set out in the programme for Government and budget statement last year. While not all sectors will be prioritised, it is important to note funding to each sector has greatly increased in recent years. The funding available across all sectors is likely to be high relative to historical levels.

On the Department's work outside the NDP review, the programme for Government committed to establishing an infrastructure division which we have now done. The division will try to boost infrastructure delivery by identifying key reforms that will unlock delivery and unblock anything that might delay project delivery. I know that is a particular of interest to the committee today. There has been significant work in that area through the Planning and Development Act by the Department of housing. We reformed the guidelines we issue concerning the public capital programme through simplification of the public spending code and the introduction of new infrastructure guidelines. However, we are conscious further improvements and policy reforms are always possible. The new infrastructure division will support those reforms by having a holistic look at potential bottlenecks. We have experts from the key delivery areas of infrastructure such as water, transport and planning. They have been redeployed from their organisations to the infrastructure division. They will work with senior civil servants in the division to look at how we do project delivery and to see what areas can be enhanced and improvements can be made to secure faster delivery. The barriers to timely infrastructure will be a key focus of our work over the next six weeks. We hope to produce a report on that in July.

We also hope to have a public consultation in June as well as the expert input by the people redeployed to the division and we will review international best practice. That work will be monitored by a new accelerating infrastructure task force announced by the Minister which first met last week. It will also be under the general oversight of the Cabinet committee on infrastructure which was recently created. The membership of the task force is comprised of a small number of experts in the area, particularly people active in the private sector with direct experience of infrastructure development or implementation of significant reform programmes. Those experts are joined by the CEOs of the commercial semi-States most integral to infrastructure development and by local government representatives. Arising from that assessment of barriers, an action plan will be developed. We hope that will provide a small number of high-impact reform actions that are robust, achievable, timebound and focused on addressing the barriers and weaknesses identified. The final piece is the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA, based in the NTMA which currently has a role in PPPs. It will provide Departments with the expertise they need to assist them in the delivery of major infrastructure projects. From that perspective, we believe the programme is ambitious and recognises there is a general enthusiasm that infrastructure delivery be accelerated. We are aware that the challenges and the many obstacles identified are difficult to overcome but we will attempt to identify the areas in which we might make the most progress. There is a determination to do that.

Relevant to the committee's agenda today, I will speak about the infrastructure guidelines. We introduced them in 2024 following a review of the previous public spending code. A lot these things have to be seen in context. The public spending code was last reviewed in the context of the experience with the national children’s hospital, where it was felt the project was not properly scoped out and designed in advance of going to tender and that was a source of considerable uncertainty and delay in the project. We therefore set out within the public spending code a number of decision gates that had to be met for a project of that nature to proceed. In implementing those guidelines under the public spending code, it was felt their application to less complex projects in fact slowed them down without necessarily addressing real risk.

Because of that, we simplified for the less complex projects, particularly projects under €200 million. We simplified the procedures in place and, effectively, we now have a three-stage procedure under the infrastructure guidelines: decide what to do, decide what you are going to bid for and then, when you know how much it is going to cost, make a final decision that represents value for money. In our view, the infrastructure guidelines have gone some way. That is not to say that as part of this exercise we will not be critically evaluating them and, as the programme for Government instructs us to do, reviewing the infrastructure guidelines and seeing what further progress we can make. We will do that in line with best practice from our international review.

Clearly, as regards any guidelines we have, the purpose is not to impede but to support project delivery. We are of the view that a properly scoped-out, properly planned project is most likely to be successfully delivered on budget and on time. That is one of the lessons we have learned. We know also, however, that there is a balance between risk and delivery and that the guidelines we establish must respect that balance and maintain an awareness of what the appropriate balance is. We give the detail in my speaking notes. I am conscious of the committee's time, Chair, but the-----