Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

I move amendment No. 2:
In page 5, to delete lines 22 to 26 and substitute the following:
“(4) A draft of the designation order shall be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas,and the order shall not be made unless a resolution approving the draft has been passed by each House.”.
I thank the Minister for coming in. I want to touch on something Senator Boyhan said around an insult to parliamentary democracy. I want to reiterate my disappointment and frustration around the waiving or pre-legislative scrutiny for this Bill. It is a really important Bill. As other Senators have said, it is crucial legislation and that is why having pre-legislative scrutiny conducted like that is part of the process of making sure legislation is good and strong. It is one of the unique roles parliamentarians have. It was incredibly frustrating that one of the only pieces of legislation that will probably come through the infrastructure committee was waived and we were not given the time. We could have done it in two or three weeks and we were not afforded that.
Regarding this amendment No. 2, I welcome the overall intention of the Bill. We obviously have a major gap when it comes to the development and delivery of critical infrastructure in Ireland. This amendment refers to the concentration of powers in the Minister's Department in relation to infrastructure and the potential lack of transparency that could occur from that. I believe such decisions should be made with oversight of the Oireachtas, coming back to the whole role of parliamentary democracy and the role we play within that.
It is of great importance that the rationale behind major planning decisions requiring extensive public funding is subject to oversight and democratic debate, particularly when we have seen issues in areas around this, notably the national children's hospital, in terms of overspend and something that is yet to be delivered. Providing Oireachtas oversight should be seen as best practice to provide transparency over the delivery of critical infrastructure. We are all in favour, I assume, of seeing public services improved in a timely and cost-effective manner. The Department need not seek to take critical decisions alone but should allow certain decisions be brought to the Oireachtas to be probed and critiqued to get the best possible result.
My colleague, Deputy Cian O'Callaghan, sought clarity on the Minister's comments that there would be a very small number of projects and programmes and that it would be disproportionate to require every project to be brought to the House of the Oireachtas for assent. There is a tension between the Minister's assertion that there would only be a small number of projects and the fact that there are hundreds of worthwhile projects in the national development plan, for example.
Transparency is crucial here in how the Minister would decide what projects make it into a very small number of projects and which get bumped down the list. How will that be decided on? How will some projects be determined to be more important, more crucial and more critical than others? There needs to be a framework explicitly written into this legislation; a comprehensive statutory framework that outlines which projects are deemed critical and which are not. It cannot simply be at the discretion of one alone. How can we ensure the criteria are here too if there are no statutory guardrails to ensure projects are chosen fairly and will have the most benefit?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16