Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-20 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland The first point that needs to be marked is that there is a big concern around the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny, which has begun to be a bit of a red flag, and then the guillotining of the Dáil debate on this Bill. Where this becomes particularly egregious is when we have legislation which is constraining the action and effect of our laws. This is part of a set of measures which we know will constrain the right of citizens to be part of politics. What I say when I want to encourage people to believe in politics is that politics, in the end, is the decisions we make about how we want to live together. For many people in this democracy a fundamental part of the decisions about how we want to live together, and the mechanism through which the idea that they are involved first becomes tangible, is the planning process. It is one of the acts, alongside voting, that many people engage in, in terms of applying for or having an opinion in relation to planning permission. This is being truncated and I will return later to how it fits with the truncation of another part of people's participation in the decisions that affect their lives and shape the world and environment in which they live, which is the right to judicial remedy and having proper access to our court systems because there is an intersection here. The language around critical infrastructure and the throwing around of that phrase is all over the narrative about this Bill but the actual thing that is happening in this Bill, to be really clear, is not massive investment in critical infrastructure or the prioritisation of huge public funds towards the delivery of things. It is not about the resourcing of our judicial processes, which we know are under-resourced, or any of the other processes that might speed things up. There are lots of separate bits in this Bill but the actual focus, the significant legislative provision that is happening here is disapplying of section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. This is particularly galling because we heard a lot of narrative about how having a planning process is a pity because we want to get the green transition quicker. That was part of the selling of this but the Bill exposes the fact that critical infrastructure has never been about the windmills and has always been about the industrial infrastructure, the data centres, the large energy users and the corporate clients. That has always been more of the picture when we talk about critical infrastructure. If it was about the environment or about delivering climate action, we would not be disapplying section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. That would not be a centre point in this Bill. The Government is talking about critical infrastructure and pushing a narrative about delivering on our goals but it is actually giving advantage to critical infrastructure which does not comply with section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. By seeking to disapply that section, the Government is effectively giving equal if not more advantageous status to the kinds of developments and infrastructure that choose not to meet the climate targets that we have, thereby digging ourselves and Ireland into an even worse position in relation to our compliance not only with Irish standards but also with our EU obligations and our international obligations under the Paris Agreement. There is huge discretion given to the Minister for public expenditure to designate a project as critical infrastructure. Again, it says that the Department must prioritise that project and presumably that could be done around the Cabinet table. The Department must prioritise that project but there is nothing around how that prioritisation actually takes effect. It is very vague. The definition of infrastructure is narrow. There is nothing about housing, healthcare, and other critically needed infrastructure but energy generation is in the mix there, and transport is in the mix. There are no safeguards around how the Minister is going to designate infrastructure and how that is going to happen in the future. This is a huge centralising of power in one individual within the Government. In terms of public duties, what we are losing by removing section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act is the obligation on public bodies to perform their functions in a manner consistent with the climate action plan, the climate action strategy, the national adaptation framework and approved sectoral adaptation plans. We are creating a wild west whereby certain public bodies in some of the things they are doing will not be contributing to what is supposedly our national plan. It is literally the opposite of joined-up thinking. When we ask why the climate Act is being disapplied, we have to say that it points to the danger of huge infrastructural projects, which are responsible for some of the biggest levels of emissions, and which may be or may relate to fossil fuel infrastructure. This is a really dangerous point of reversal of what had been the previous position. The Minister's power in terms of the designation of projects has been the focus of others but another concern arises in relation to ministerial power in terms of what is a public body. There are the projects, however they may be designated and then there is the question of the public bodies. This is the second blank cheque because a public body means a Minister, a local authority, a body under enactment under the Companies Act, a designated institution or any other person or body prescribed by regulation under section 8. Again, there is a danger here that we have subcontractors, or sub-companies or others under public contract, for example, who are being given this exclusion or this space. It is not clear who, in fact, will be employing this or what they are going to be employing it for. I would like the Minister to tell us how we are going to know that our EU law obligations are going to be met. There is the issue of disapplying our own climate Act but what about our EU law obligations? Our international obligations are important too. Why is the Paris Agreement, to which we are signatories, not referenced in section 2? There is reference to EU law in the section but there is no obligation around it. Then there is the blank cheque on top of it. This is bad legislation, on top of the dilution we saw previously in the Planning and Development Act and it goes alongside the new announcement on the scale of fees. Those who are being denied proper access to participation in the planning process are also going to be excluded from proper judicial remedy, as they are entitled to under the Aarhus Convention, in terms of the courts. This is all happening at a time when we are also debating the introduction of new powers for corporate courts. We are discussing new powers for corporations in terms of seeking satisfaction from the State at the same time as we are diluting citizens' involvement in the decisions that shape their lives in the places where they live, at planning and at judicial level. --- 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