Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-20 ============================================================ Cathal Byrne (FG), Cultural and Educational Panel I welcome the Minister to the Chamber on behalf of the Fine Gael group, as Fine Gael spokesperson on infrastructure. The Bill before us is probably one of the most important pieces of legislation that will be brought forward by this Government over the entire course of this term. It gets to the core point of delivery and ensuring this Government can deliver on the key infrastructure challenges we have. It also ensures some of the largest key infrastructure projects we are talking about bringing forward, such as the metro, airports, ports, major motorways and hospitals, are able to get through the planning process to be delivered as swiftly and quickly as possible. I am a part of the Oireachtas infrastructure committee. Over the past year, we have engaged with many different stakeholders, representatives of industry and the various State bodies and boards, who have all spoken about the need for the public good to be put right at the heart of our planning process. I have no doubt this legislation is part of the overall process the Minister has brought forward with his colleagues to ensure the red tape gets cut and delivery can happen faster and swifter. In making it possible to have infrastructure designated as critical, we are following what other countries have done in recent years in putting in place a hierarchy of projects where certain projects are above others, which is the right way to go. There is no doubt in my mind that certain projects are critical to the infrastructure needs of the country. As regards motorways, and looking at my own area, the Minister spoke about how this legislation is going to disallow, in certain instances, section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. I remember when that legislation was taken in a judicial review by the Friends of the Irish Environment all the way up the ladder into the High Court, where the planning for the Galway ring road was quashed as a result of the courts feeling the application did not take sufficient account of section 15 of that legislation and that not enough consideration had been given to reducing how many vehicles would travel on that road. The impact of that legislation on my area has been the delay by a year and a half of the key motorway we are trying to get built from Oilgate to Rosslare Harbour, which would ensure a motorway runs right from Belfast all the way to Rosslare Port, while the impact of that court case was reviewed in all aspects of our planning permission. This is the real, tangible impact. We are a year and a half behind because of the impact of that section. The Minister is asking us to support certain projects labelled as critical having that section disapplied. I am not somebody who denies that climate change is having a real impact on the country, nor am I somebody who denies climate change is real. However, I am somebody who recognises there is always going to be a contest between environmental protections and the public interest in delivering infrastructure projects and sometimes a balance has to be struck, where the needs of the public, the economy and society at large means that we have to disallow certain environmental protections. I support that. I know the protections existing in this legislation give a sufficient balance between those two competing interests. I am also somebody who comes from a county that has seen the impact these delays in planning can bring. In Enniscorthy, as the Minister is aware, we have had devastating flooding. A fully funded flood scheme of €55 million was allocated 11 years ago, but because we cannot get through the planning process, we have not been able to deliver on that. I have been in correspondence with the Minister on the interpretation in this legislation of what does and does not qualify as critical. I hope flood schemes like that in Enniscorthy, which is part of the national development plan, will be labelled as critical infrastructure. I would like the Minister to commit on the record that not only this project but flood schemes in general in those circumstances can be labelled as critical infrastructure, and where the overriding needs of the public and the national development plan align that the Government will view these as key projects. It is important to have on the record that it is possible to designate certain flood schemes as critical infrastructure under this legislation. The other thing I want to speak about is the enormous challenges we will have, as we learned at the Oireachtas infrastructure committee, with the balance being struck with the metro north project. It was said that the application for planning permission in that case could have been up to 3,500 pages. If we are going to deliver some of these key national infrastructure projects, we have to simplify even further. It is one thing to say to all State bodies that certain infrastructure is critical and must be prioritised, but the rules and structures we have in place to get planning permission on any of these major projects in and of themselves create a difficulty. If a single page is wrong in such a large document, the whole application fails and has to be done again. I encourage the Minister, his colleagues in Government and the accelerating infrastructure task force to look at the planning process for these major projects. While this will move things a significant way forward, there is always more that can be done. It was recently highlighted to me that a local authority looking to develop a project involving water from the river or the sea must apply for a marine area consent licence but cannot apply it for simultaneously with the planning permission application. They have to be done one after the other. That means you apply for your marine area consent licence. That could take anywhere between three months to a year. Once you get that, you apply for planning permission, which could take anywhere from three months to two years. Why can both of those not be applied for simultaneously, with one contingent on the other? If there is a condition in one, then it also has to be a condition in the other. When that point was made at the infrastructure council by the chief executive of Wexford County Council, it struck me as common sense. That is maybe something the Minister and his officials can look at. The Fine Gael group will be supporting this legislation, and I encourage my colleagues in the Opposition to support this legislation as well. It is one of the largest, most significant, most impactful and key pieces of legislation the Government will bring forward this term. I would appreciate if we could get through it as quickly as possible so we can start implementing it as soon as possible. --- 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/2026-05-20/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-20