Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

This is all well and good and we have been reading a lot about this since the revised national development plan was published. We will see updates on specific projects shortly. Will there be timelines for those projects? Looking beyond the abstract, what will it mean for people? For example, will the package of proposals that the Minister wants implemented shorten the timeframe for the delivery of the MetroLink or the northern line DART project to Drogheda? How many new homes will it deliver? At the moment this is all in the abstract about task forces and so on reporting but there is very little detail.

The Minister briefed the media earlier this week that the threshold in the Department's infrastructure guidelines will increase from €200 million to €500 million.

I am not absolutely convinced that will improve project delivery. In fact, I would advise caution in that regard. The Minister should be streamlining the process for using the infrastructure guidelines, not necessarily increasing the threshold.

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