Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The national development plan is the State's medium- to long-term plan for public capital investment. The current national development plan to 2030 provided for public capital investment of €165 billion over the period 2021 to 2030. Government is currently prioritising an early review of this plan, to be published this month, which will set out five-year departmental capital ceilings and additionality to 2030 and overall capital expenditure ceilings for the ten-year period to 2035.

The objective of the review is to improve our infrastructure, particularly housing, energy, water and transport. Improvements to these sectors are necessary to deliver on the core ambition for the review to fund the supporting infrastructure to enable the delivery of thousands of additional homes and to boost our competitiveness.

This reflects a planned and strategic approach to public capital investment over the next ten years. Planning and prioritisation of the funding will be guided by: the critical priorities for infrastructure investment highlighted in the programme for Government; the capacity of sectors to deliver projects and programmes within the period of the review, while being cognisant of trade-offs within and between sectors such as construction sector labour supply; the cost of proposals in the context of competing priorities and existing levels of capital funding; and the alignment of particular projects with the core focus on housing and competitiveness.

The revised national development plan will also form part of our broader structural plan and associated medium-term expenditure framework. The plan is being worked on by my Department and the Department of Finance and will reflect the strategic choices that will need to be made over the next five years in the context of tax and expenditure to ensure a balanced and sustainable fiscal outlook.

The medium-term expenditure framework being prepared by my Department will support the delivery of key social and economic priorities of Government for the period to 2030. Financial planning for capital projects also takes place at the individual project level. My Department, through the infrastructure guidelines, provides the framework through which Departments can plan.

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