Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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135. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if any projects under his remit are on hold due to Capital Funding pressures; if he will indicate the projects, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12624/23]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Capital projects in my Department are delivered mainly through our enterprise agencies. Currently there are no capital projects on hold due to funding pressures.

My Department, working through Enterprise Ireland, currently has 79 approved projects supported under the Regional Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) and the Border Enterprise Development Fund (BEDF). Enterprise Ireland continuously monitors and reports on each of the projects supported under the REDF and BEDF and submits them formally to a National Oversight Group managed by my department. For projects which experienced unexpected delays due to cashflow and construction inflation costs over the past 12 to 18 months additional funding of €12m was provided in supports.

With regard to capital projects delivered by IDA Ireland, their strategy “Driving Recovery & Sustainable Growth 2021-24” sets out ambitious plans for the delivery of advanced building solutions in regional locations and key capital-intensive regional infrastructure to support the organisation’s Strategy.

The overall dynamic of the domestic commercial property market remains extremely challenging, and the delivery of the IDA Property Capital Investment Programme is dependent on a wide range of external stakeholders, independent public processes and FDI client timelines.

Many factors can impact on these timelines and the construction industry continues to be impacted by global supply chains and significant construction cost inflation challenges that have arisen in recent years.

To date, the factors outlined above, including Covid and Brexit, together with geopolitical events in Ukraine, which have impacted inflation and economic certainty, have resulted in delays to the progress of some capital projects across the construction industry. IDA continues to monitor these challenges and the potential impact of same.

IDA is continuing with its current capital investment programme where it will deliver 19 Advanced Building Solutions (ABS) to regional locations over the course of the current strategy. IDA will also maintain a focus on land banks and utility intensive strategic sites to future proof the ability of its property portfolio to support the project pipeline, most notably large-scale capital-intensive projects which can have significant regional and national economic impacts.

IDA also continues to seek and develop partnerships with key regional stakeholders including Local Authorities, where appropriate to ensure land, infrastructure and building permits are available across the regions which provide MNCs with greater certainty and predictability as they make investment decisions. Furthermore, IDA has committed to exploit opportunities related to renewable energy use across its property portfolio to contribute to the ambitious public sector energy efficiency and decarbonisation targets for 2030 as set out in the Climate Action Plan and the Programme for Government.