Written answers

Thursday, 17 July 2025

Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

National Development Plan

Photo of Paul MurphyPaul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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2. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the amount that will be allocated under the review of the National Development Plan to public capital investment in housing, public transport and renewable energy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39718/25]

Photo of Jack ChambersJack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government sets out the clear ambition to prioritise the delivery of transformative, critical and growth-enhancing infrastructure over the next 5 years. To support these goals, Government has prioritised an early review of the National Development Plan, which is being led by my Department and will be published in July.From February, officials in my Department set about identifying the parameters, priorities and critical milestones for the Review. This was done to support the ambition of the Review to improve our infrastructure, especially housing, water, energy and transport. Prioritisation of these sectors is necessary to enable the delivery of hundreds of thousands of additional homes and to boost our competitiveness.

In early April, I secured Government approval to commence the review process following which Departments were written to advise on the Government approved approach to the Review. This set out that the core focus of the Review is to ensure that supporting economic infrastructure can be prioritised to deliver 300,000 additional homes by 2030 and to support international competitiveness.Since April and continuing to this month, a process of bilateral engagement has taken place between my Department and individual spending Departments to assess their investment plans and programmes. An intensive series of bilateral engagements commenced at official level and is continuing at Ministerial level. To ensure all stakeholders of the NDP had a chance to contribute to the process, my Department held a public consultation on national priority sectors for additional investment and associated trade-offs and constraints. There were 185 responses to the consultation, which are being analysed by my officials to inform the decision making process. In addition, I chaired a session on infrastructure prioritisation and delivery at the National Economic Dialogue, where there was a constructive exchange of views among interested stakeholders.

The Review document to be published this month will set out annual capital allocations for Departments over the five years to 2030 and overall capital expenditure ceilings for the ten years to 2035. This will be followed by sectoral publications later this year detailing the particular programmes that will be funded from the NDP. While the allocations to particular sectors are still to be agreed, the sectors referenced by the Deputy are among the key priorities for the Review.

Decisions on funding allocations to particular sectors will be guided by:

  • the critical priorities for infrastructure investment highlighted in the Programme for Government;
  • the capacity of sectors to deliver proposed projects and programmes within the period of the Review, cognisant of trade-offs within and between sectors such as construction sector labour supply;
  • the cost of proposals in the context of competing priorities and existing levels of capital funding;
  • responses to the public consultation; and
  • the alignment of particular projects with the core focus on housing and competitiveness.

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