Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Committee on Infrastructure and National Development Plan Delivery

IBEC Report on Infrastructure Ambition for a Competitive, Productive and Resilient Economy: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Gerard Brady:

Private. I refer in particular to large multinationals and pharmaceuticals and those kinds of places, the building of many data centres and those kinds of projects. A big chunk of it was the Intel campus, which was an enormous project. There are really large private sector projects that have come through, some coming to an end now. We also see that a lot of decisions that we would have seen on private sector industrial projects that would have been made in previous years, because of the tariff and the global situation, are being held off on now for a period. We have talked to a lot of global corporates about what it means long-term in terms of those projects and their view is that at the moment, the uncertainty means no one is making decisions, so there might be a bit of a slowdown in some of those areas. Interest rates also played a role. Commercial property has slowed down an awful lot in recent years. It was booming because, again, interest rates rose and there was not as much demand. It pushed it back, so the share that will be taken up by State investment is getting much bigger as we go along. Similarly, in housing, nearly half of housing now being delivered is funded in one way or another by the State, so the State is taking on a bigger role. When it comes to the kind of critical infrastructure that will allow the private sector to continue to grow, we probably went through a decade post the financial crisis where it was all private or very much private and very little State. There will have to be a little more State involvement in the coming decades to be able to do the grid, the water, the housing and all those kinds of areas and transport as well to catch up, in effect. We are now catching up on the public side with what has been a strong decade in terms of private infrastructure.

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