Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Very much so. There is a great opportunity for us as a country to make the investments that we need. We have the ability to borrow at historically low interest rates. There are infrastructure needs in housing, transport, education, health, climate action, renewable energy and so on. We need to make progress in those areas.

Some of the capacity in the construction sector is probably going to be freed up over the period ahead. It is reasonable to assume that we will have a change in the amount of commercial construction activity not, it is to be hoped, in house building, but it is fair to assume that there may well be capacity in some other areas where we can get better value for money and deliver on those projects.

There is a great opportunity for our country to improve our infrastructure at this time. As the Deputy knows, we will shortly commence a review of the national development plan. The current plan is scheduled to run to 2027. We have signalled that we want to extend that. Over the course of the next number of months, we will bring forward a new ten-year capital development plan to 2030 with a capital envelope for the next decade. That will provide the certainty that the construction industry needs.

We will also provide capital ceilings for individual Ministers and line Departments for the next five years, which will allow them to plan and progress the delivery of projects through the pipeline. It can be slow, as the Deputy knows, to deliver on major capital projects, particularly around public transport. We need to give certainty to Ministers that the pipeline of funding is secure. Spending money on capital is money well spent, provided that we are getting value for money and the infrastructure that we are investing in is needed. We will only invest in infrastructure that is actually needed.