Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 5 and 33 together.

As Minister, I am responsible for setting overall capital allocations across Departments and for monitoring the relative expenditure and delivery at departmental level. In the national development plan review 2021, the Government originally committed €165 billion in capital investment for the period from 2021 to 2030, and subsequently agreed to additional funding of €2.25 billion in March 2024 for the period from 2024 to 2026. The revised national development plan, published in July, sets out €275.4 billion in public capital investment to 2035, which is the largest and most significant capital injection in our economy in the history of the State. Following the agreement in July of this year of the national development plan review, gross capital ceilings for all sectors have been set out to 2030.

While the Government has prioritised investment towards the critical growth-enabling sectors of housing, energy, water and transport, all Departments are now tasked with developing sectoral plans for the upcoming five years out to 2030. These plans will detail priority projects to be progressed, and Departments must ensure these are affordable within the overall capital expenditure ceilings, as agreed by the Government. These plans will be published in the coming weeks.

The Deputy referenced strategic outcomes 10 and 4. Strategic outcome 10 refers to access to quality childcare, education and health services. The Government has allocated €795 million to the Department of Children, Disability and Equality and €9.25 billion to the Department of Health for the 2026 to 2030 period. A range of projects have already been delivered under this since 2021, including, for example, a €6.9 billion investment in capital infrastructure for primary and post-primary schools resulting in 1,200 projects completed, many of which are in the Deputy's constituency; the establishment of 18 Sláintecare healthy communities in disadvantaged areas under the healthy Ireland framework; the Sláintecare healthy homes scheme, from which 4,500 people benefit; and the ongoing work in communities from a public health perspective.

National strategic outcome 4 relates to sustainable mobility and a commitment to a more environmentally sustainable public transport system. Given the nature of this strategic priority, many projects take a number of years to fully deliver. Transport has been highlighted and focused on as a critical growth-enabling area in the national development plan review. A total of €22.3 billion was allocated to the Department of Transport for the 2026 to 2030 period. A further €2 billion was allocated to support low-carbon transportation projects, including projects such as MetroLink, under the national development plan review. Considerable progress has been made on a range of projects across the country under this objective since the 2021 review, including, for example, planning permissions for nine bus corridors under BusConnects Dublin; final network details for BusConnects Cork; planning permission for BusConnects Galway; planning implementation for BusConnects Limerick; and work is now ongoing on BusConnects Waterford. Over €320 million has been invested in walking and cycling projects through the active travel infrastructure programme.

Full lists of projects and programmes for each of the ten strategic outcomes are regularly published by my Department. The capital investment tracker provides a composite update on all major investments where there is an estimated project cost of over €20 million. There is a detailed map of each of the projects relating to each of the specific and strategic outcomes.

It is important to balance the conversation. We need to accelerate delivery, and we are fronting up on doing an extensive amount more on capital investment in our economy, but a huge amount has been delivered. We are seeing that in our school system in terms of social infrastructure. We are also seeing it with a lot of the public transport projects and continued investment in the road network, as well as the delivering of outcomes for bed capacity in our health system. We need to balance the conversation. A lot of infrastructure is being delivered but we want to do more and do it quicker.

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