Written answers

Thursday, 3 April 2025

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

Capital Expenditure Programme

Photo of Seán Ó FearghaílSeán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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130. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the action he is taking to improve value for money and timely delivery in public spending projects; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16091/25]

Photo of Jack ChambersJack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Total capital investment in 2025 will be almost €15 billion which is the highest annual spend to date in the history of this country and four times the level of investment only 10 years ago. This continued investment is providing housing, school buildings and transport infrastructure all across the country, building capacity for our future.

While recognising the significant progress made, the Government is aware that more needs to be done to improve Ireland’s infrastructure and to meet the demands associated with population growth.

The Programme for Government acknowledges that delays to project delivery result in higher costs and hamper our ability to provide the necessary infrastructure to service a modern society and economy. It also represents a real risk to our competitiveness and to our attractiveness as a location for foreign direct investment. Achieving value for money in a timely manner, while reducing cost and schedule overruns is a vital part of delivering the NDP.

My Department is responsible for the Infrastructure Guidelines, which replaced the Public Spending Code and were published in December 2023, with an effective date of 1 January 2024. The Infrastructure Guidelines refreshed the value for money requirements for capital projects , reducing the number of approval stages prior to implementation from 5 to 3 and streamlining the requirements for major projects, raising the level of cost at which a project is considered a major project to €200m. This allows for projects below this limit to proceed more speedily through the appraisal and evaluation process compared to those of greater scale and complexity.

In addition, the Programme for Government commits my Department to reviewing the Infrastructure Guidelines and to create a Public Investment Act, requiring sponsoring agencies to meet timelines on development of project appraisals and other evaluations so as to reduce delays in decision making and embed value for money across all capital projects.

I intend to inform Government in the coming weeks of my specific plans for implementing the Programme for Government commitments on infrastructure delivery reform, focusing on delivery, accountability and value for money. Broadly speaking, this work will be initially focused on identifying the barriers to infrastructure development and seeking Government agreement on the actions to address these barriers.

As part of this work there will be extensive engagement. I intend to engage directly with key stakeholders to gather feedback on the practical issues being experienced in the development of infrastructure and this direct engagement will be complemented by public consultation to gather broader views. It is from this real world evidence that realistic options to address infrastructure delivery will be developed.

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