Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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1. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the reforms he plans to introduce to improve the delivery of infrastructure and capital development outlined in the revised national development plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [60445/25]

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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We have been reading a lot of significant information in the media in recent days and weeks about plans the Minister appears to have to improve the delivery of infrastructure and capital development in the context of the revised national development plan, NDP. Will he elaborate precisely on what those plans are and how he plans to implement them?

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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My Department is currently finalising the completion of a report and action plan on accelerating infrastructure delivery in our economy. It will be brought to Government in the coming weeks. It will set out a series of high-impact reforms targeted at the most significant barriers to the timely delivery of critical infrastructure. These reforms will have a clear focus on reducing timelines and significantly improving outcomes. They will be targeted at the most impactful barriers to infrastructure delivery as outlined in the report published in July. This report identified 12 barriers to the effective delivery of infrastructure in our country.

The most significant barriers identified are broadly categorised across three headings, which were set out in the report. The first is the regulatory environment, including the growth and complexity of legislation; policy statements and strategies; how consents, licences and permissions for development are obtained; the timelines for these processes, engagement between the regulatory bodies and project developers; and consistency across regulatory bodies.

The second heading is the planning and legal systems, including the increasing role that the courts play in infrastructure projects; the cascading consequences from these decisions through development cycles; and the impact that the uncertainty in planning and legal decisions are having on projects.

The third heading is internal systems, such as how the Government allocates funding and develops a credible project pipeline; the rules applied to the development of projects; and how contractors are procured to undertake the works necessary for a project.

The task force is providing strategic guidance and practical insights into the development of actions to address these barriers. This work is also informed by extensive engagement in the economy with delivery bodies, regulators, and industry representatives, as well as international best practice.

Some reforms had already been introduced when we published the NDP. We have given funding certainty of €102 billion from 2026 to 2030, which is €34 billion over the previous allocation. It provides greater certainty for key strategic projects such as MetroLink, the greater Dublin drainage scheme and the eastern and midlands water supply project, as well as the prioritisation of funding for critical infrastructure, such as electricity, water, and transport to help the supply of new homes and economic competitiveness.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Thank you, Minister.

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Departments are in the process of developing sectoral investment plans to allocate their capital resources and these will be published in the coming weeks.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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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.

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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There are extensive actions across every barrier and the plan is to have the majority of the practical actions being delivered in 2026. Every action we take is about shortening and truncating timelines for the development lifecycle of critical infrastructure, which is simply taking too long. That means we need to increase our risk appetite. We have too much process and too many decision-makers and there is risk aversion across our systems. Secondly, within government, where we can control processes or procedures, that means we cut unnecessary levels of process which do not add value but simply add time. We have had a forensic assessment of this in recent months. The response to it around the infrastructure report which we publish involves practical actions which will demonstrate shortening of timelines for critical infrastructure and other infrastructure across our economy.

On the point about housing, water and wastewater treatment plants are central to the delivery of new homes and many of Irish Water's capital projects are taking far too long. We have secondments from Irish Water and the task force in my Department. They make a positive contribution to the whole area of reform.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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Would the Government take any responsibility for what the Minister described as the unnecessary processes that have developed over time? We hear a lot of analysis of this and finally the Government appears to be cottoning on to the fact we have a real problem with delivery. We have been saying it in opposition for years - I try to be constructive and put forward alternative proposals for delivery of infrastructure - but it is only when someone like John Collison writes an article for a national newspaper that senior Government representatives seem to take notice. I understand from the media that Fianna Fáil backbenchers have been saying this for a long time as well. There is a form of fetishisation of bureaucracy in this country. We seem to love it and get caught up in it, but it may have gone too far. In some respects, however, that is a scapegoating exercise. Our problem these days is not money. It was always money but now it is delivery and this Government will be judged on delivery. The IMF said clearly that our infrastructure lags 32% behind comparable countries. It is a rich country that feels very poor.

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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That is why we have corrected that around having over 5% GNI* allocated for critical infrastructure, which is one of the highest levels of infrastructure investment across EU counterparts. It did not take any article in any newspaper for me to prioritise infrastructure delivery. Since the brief was allocated to my Department, we have stood up a task force, developed an evidence base and published the report in July on the evidence base, which is now informing the various reforms which we will introduce and set out in the coming weeks. That is about cutting unnecessary processes within government and the State. We have a complicated structure of regulation in our economy which needs simplification, and not only at EU level. We need to prioritise domestic simplification and reform to do things quicker, to develop and facilitate economic growth and, ultimately, to deliver infrastructure quicker and build more homes. That is the central metric which will underpin all the work on infrastructure. We will set out the detail around that when it is published in the coming weeks.