Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. We have identified a number of constraints in delivery of the national development plan. To facilitate an exchange with the Deputy, I will pick two. First is the availability of the workers we need to translate spending plans into delivery of homes and projects and the labour and skills shortages in our economy. We are looking to address that through progress being made in the Department of further and higher education in relation to apprenticeship plans. While progress there will always take time, it is the best chance we have to ensure we have the workers we need to deliver the projects we need. The second issue, with which the Deputy will be familiar and which has been a real challenge, is the impact of inflation on the delivery of important projects. We made a number of changes to the level of capital we are making available to Departments in the coming years and to our public sector frameworks for contractors and professionals to deal with the risks created by inflation. With a little bit of good luck, I hope in the time ahead to begin to see those inflationary pressures decrease to a lower level than they have been at in recent years. Those two are important challenges in the delivery of the national development plan.

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