Mr. Ken Cleary:

The programme for Government is very clear. This is a new committee and we have a new function, under the Department of public expenditure, on infrastructure reform. The programme for Government sets out a range of actions there. To address it in plain English, what we are going to be concentrating on is the reforms that we can commence which will accelerate the delivery of infrastructure. The Deputy put it very well in that what is needed to deliver housing is that critical underpinning infrastructure, namely, water, transport and electricity, needed to deliver every other piece of infrastructure, whether healthcare, social infrastructure or homes. We are going to concentrate on those critical areas of economic infrastructure - water, transport and electricity.

As it is a new function for this Department, we are aware that we do not have the expertise we need to be able to make specific recommendations to the Government on what barriers to remove or how to accelerate delivery.

We have done a couple of things. In the first instance we have brought in people from those key commercial semi-States that are delivering this infrastructure on behalf of the Government. We now have people redeployed into our organisation from ESB Networks, EirGrid, Uisce Éireann, An Bord Pleanála and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. They will work with us on our infrastructure reform agenda.

In regard to our infrastructure reform agenda, we believe we need to go out and in a systematic way assess what are the barriers that are impeding delivery of infrastructure at the moment. We have many views and opinions but we do not have a systematic gathering of evidence and evaluation of that evidence. We are engaged in this task at the moment. As the Secretary General mentioned, we are going to launch a public consultation on this in June. Input will be sought from the public and from organisations. This will be combined with the expertise we brought in from the commercial semi-States. We will directly interview key stakeholders as well. Our hope is that by July we will be able to present a report to the Government highlighting what we believe the barriers to infrastructure development are. From that a work programme on what can be done to mitigate these barriers and accelerate infrastructure delivery will arise.

We have brought people in from the commercial semi-States. We also have structures to engage in across government. As already mentioned, a Cabinet committee on infrastructure has been created. There is now a senior officials group on infrastructure that will sit underneath that. The Departments of the Ministers represented on that Cabinet committee will be sitting around the table at the senior officials group.

Bilateral arrangements are also being put in place with the other offices that have been established by the Government, for example the housing activation office. We will remain in contact with them. We will be looking at that critical economic infrastructure that unlocks other things. I understand they will be looking at specific issues in specific areas of the country. There is going to be a good deal of overlap between our work. Similarly, there will be links with the work that the Minister for enterprise is going to do on competitiveness. The provision of infrastructure is critical to our competitiveness and the offering we have for inward investment.

We have those formal structures in place. We will also be talking to our colleagues on a day-to-day basis as this work evolves. It is a very challenging timetable in terms of what we were asked to do. However, we are looking forward to getting into it.