Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I generally believe it is very important for public officials to listen and engage, including those who have responsibility for the delivery of the projects in terms of the various agencies. I am sure if the Deputy reaches out to the Minister's office, he can engage with him. I am sure he has done so. I will certainly pass this on as well. I am in a point of agreement. First, I disagree with the idea that the project is going backwards. I very much believe it is moving forward. That is why it is in our national development plan, and the investment plan of yesterday. We will go to consultation on the preferred route in 2026. I think that is progress. I agree with the Deputy on the diagnosis of the challenge in terms of how we streamline infrastructure delivery. The Deputy will remember from our debates on these issues that I ran an election campaign where my party heavily advocated for the need for a Department of infrastructure in our programme for Government. We got a division in the Department of public expenditure and reform on infrastructure delivery. We are going to see the outworkings of that, probably next week and certainly within the next two weeks in terms of how we can streamline processes. As Minister for Finance, I believe funding will not be the major challenge in the delivery of those capital projects. It will be timelines and making sure we can look at running some processes in parallel rather than waiting meekly for this to end, and then this and so on. There are more gates here than you would see in many country estates. We need to look at how we can reduce that as well.

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