Mr. Shane Dempsey:

From talking to TII, the delivery timeframe for an infrastructure project has expanded way past 15 years. It is rapidly expanding but methods of construction and delivery of infrastructure - the physical piece - are improving. If one talks to our housebuilding cousins, they will say they can build a house from foundation to roof and have it kitted out in six weeks, but the committee might think about long it takes for the builders to get to the point where they can actually build the houses.

As regards the delivery mechanism of the State, which is the whole ecosystem, parts of it are getting more productive - engineering, architecture and construction - but the bureaucracy and regulatory mishmash that is evolving is delaying these things. As to the announcements yesterday in the budget, every time we see an NDP with a major figure for investment, for example, €150 billion, we think "Fantastic", but we know that, tomorrow or next year, a large slew of that money will not be deployed or will be wasted through legal disputes, contractual issues, delays, judicial reviews, etc.

Regarding our focus, we are improving our delivery times but the overall project timelines are elongating because of bureaucracy.