Cathal Byrne (Fine Gael)

I acknowledge our guests in the Visitors Gallery, including my friend, Councillor Paddy Meade, and his guests the Carters. My understanding is that both his father and his brother served as TDs in the Dáil in the past. They are most welcome to this Chamber.

I thank the Minister, Deputy Chambers, very much for joining us today. I pay tribute to him, the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, and the officials in the Department on the work that has been done to date.

I am the Fine Gael spokesperson on public expenditure and infrastructure. I want to raise three main points today. In the last line of his speech the Minister said: "We have the resources and the opportunity to make real progress and we must follow through." This Dáil term and Government must be about delivery in housing and disability services but also in infrastructure. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the resources we have to make sure that we are in a position to deliver. I very much welcome the fact that we have the new infrastructure delivery unit in the Minister's Department, which he chairs, the Cabinet subcommittee on infrastructure, which he also chairs, and also the accelerating infrastructure task force.

I am a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Infrastructure. In recent months we examined some of the key blockages. I am aware the Department is doing that at the moment. I want to speak for a moment on that. We must get to grips with judicial reviews and the fact that anybody across the country can lodge a planning objection to any piece of infrastructure, anywhere in Ireland, and after it goes through the planning process they can take a judicial review. At no point in the entire process is the interests of the public good considered. It is one thing to have a legitimate objector to a piece of infrastructure with a genuine reason that directly impacts on the person, and the lives of their family, but we have spurious objectors across the country, who have no connection to an area and no direct impact as a result of the infrastructure project taking cases and judicial reviews. The Department must get to grips with that. The public interest must be at the forefront of a judicial review. There must be a genuine legitimate reason and basis for a case to be taken.

The Courts Service of Ireland told the infrastructure committee that virtually no cases are dismissed at the first stage, which is whether there is a legitimate public interest in taking the case. Such legislation must be prioritised by the Department, in conjunction with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

When the ring road in Galway went through the planning process, it went through An Bord Pleanála and a judicial review was taken in 2022 on the basis of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act (Amendment) 2021, whereby the Friends of the Irish Environment successfully overturned the planning permission granted by An Bord Pleanála for the Galway ring road on the basis that Galway City Council and Galway County Council did not consider an alternative to building the motorway. I cannot understand that at all. A motorway exists to provide a route for motor vehicles to travel along. What is the alternative to the motorway? Why was that allowed to happen?

That section of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act refers to no mitigation measures being taken to reduce emissions. The impact of the decision has been seen in my constituency in Wexford, where I come from, which is awaiting the development of the motorway from Oylegate to Rosslare, which would allow the M11 to run the entire way from Belfast directly to Rosslare Europort. The impact of the court case and the fact that the judicial review was successful has added 18 months to the planning process for the building of the Oylegate to Rosslare motorway because Wexford County Council, in conjunction with TII, now has to consider the impact of building a motorway on the climate targets set for transport and what mitigation measures can be taken so that individuals would travel by public transport, cycling or walking as opposed to using the motorway. That section of the legislation must be reformed to prioritise the fact that, as a country, we need motorway infrastructure to be developed and we cannot be hamstrung by judicial reviews taken on the basis that alternatives are not being considered for active travel such as walking and cycling, when constructing a motorway. The planning and design phase of the project started in December 2021 and the latest update I received states it will not be in a position to seek planning permission from An Bord Pleanála until the end of 2026. There is no way a motorway project for a 30 km stretch of road, which has been subject to design and where the route has been selected, should be delayed for five years. These are some of the infrastructural blockages that I have seen as a member of the infrastructure committee, and that the Minister sees in his role in the Department that we must get to grips with as a Government and as a country.

I want to raise a number of issues in Wexford relating to the national development plan. I acknowledge the fact that the Minister, together with the Minister, Deputy James Browne, and me, visited Wexford General Hospital on Friday. He met with Linda O'Leary, the hospital manager, representatives of the HSE and many of the very hard-working staff. Planning permission has been awarded for a 97-bed unit and construction is to commence at the beginning of next year. Other demands were made at the meeting for progress on beds, the emergency department and laboratories in Wexford General Hospital.I hope that as part of the new national development plan, the necessary funding will be awarded to make those a reality. On the question of mental health beds, I want to highlight that we have 178,000 people living in Wexford. During the summer, that number increased by up to a quarter. At the moment, if a person is in need of a mental health bed, they have to travel 60 km from Wexford to Waterford. Currently, there are no acute mental health beds in Wexford. There is no 24-hour service run by the State. The only ones are those operated by the voluntary sector, including Talk to Tom. As part of the national development plan, I would like to see the introduction of a small facility of perhaps ten to 20 beds in Wexford to deal with the mental health crisis we are currently facing.

Finally, I want to highlight the Enniscorthy flood relief project. The Minister of State, Deputy Moran, visited the town to see this project. Enniscorthy was flooded in 1924, 1947, 1965, 2000, 2025 and most recently in 2021. This is an example of where the Department set aside €65 million in 2015 but because of delays and bureaucracy in the planning process, we have not been able to deliver the project. The money is there but the project has not been given planning consent.