Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach -----because that is where I am about to go. I welcome Fianna Fáil's motion. It is very timely. We are all fully aware of the constraints that obtain in respect of housing delivery, balanced regional development, economic competitiveness and climate transitioning, but how we experience these and see evidence of them on the ground is completely different. First and foremost, we are very close to opening the first section of the N5, a €450 million investment in Roscommon that will allow people to access Mayo and the north west. This is the sort of project that we want to see happen. This is the sort of investment we need in respect of infrastructure in order that we might address the imbalance in regional development. There are also the very simple things that my colleagues mentioned when they went through the geography of various parts of Kerry and Galway. Individual villages were mentioned. In many cases, we have already allocated money to address some of the infrastructure issues that exist. One of the points related to focusing on co-ordinating State agencies. I have a situation in west Roscommon whereby councillors say that Irish Water will have to reinstate a road to a certain standard but where the company is saying that this standard is above the standard it would like to invest in and that it can do it in a different way. Ultimately, we are looking at an 18-month period during which there have been more than 60 outages in the village of Cloonfad. I do not care whose problem it is; I just want it to be resolved. As public representatives, we are fighting to get the money that is needed allocated. That is what it comes down to in brass tacks. My colleague Senator Kennelly has been talking for years about football teams and how our clubs are dying because there are no young people in communities. I have spoken here about digital hubs and remote working and how we need to enhance and promote these an awful lot more. We have invested the money in the national broadband plan. The infrastructure is there. While a lot of people felt we were overpaying for it, I am of the view that it was the right time to do it. We probably saved ourselves money in the long run, particularly when you consider what it would cost to try to do the project now. This is the sort of massive project that we need to deliver in order to address the regional imbalance. This afternoon, I attended the Car Rental Council of Ireland's presentation in Buswells. Reference was made to how the European Commission's proposed regulations for 2028 could mandate that all rental cars would have to be electric. I do not need to look it up because I already know that none of our airports currently has the grid capacity to allow for the charging of electric rental cars. In fact, when I asked a question in this regard at the presentation, I was told that Dublin Airport is probably 50% behind the capacity it would need to meet the demands of converting its fleet to EVs. That is before we take into account the two new data centres going up in the local area and a potential metro north. We and our partners in Europe are creating policy that is dictating the demands that we are going to have. We need to address those demands before we meet them. That is why I really welcome the publication of the Government's accelerated infrastructure report. The Minister has a Dublin focus but he is also very focused on his roots in the west and further out in the region. There are smaller things we can do to open up pockets of housing capacity, that can open up job opportunities and address the regional imbalance. On the climate transition, rather than creating whole new interconnectors now, if we increase the capacities of a lot of our substations we will open up the opportunities to develop. As Senator Murphy said, if we create small-scale water treatment plants, we will open the opportunities to develop the houses there. There are simple solutions. In my home town of Castlerea, Longford Springs with an additional pump would have capacity to distribute a lot more water. Simple things can open opportunities and that is what the Minister’s plan is trying to do. I welcome the Minister's presence tonight and I welcome the motion. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-04