Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16
============================================================

Cathal Byrne (FG), Cultural and Educational Panel

Anyone who lives in Wexford has long sought the finishing of the road that runs from Belfast to Rosslare Europort. The motorway from Oylegate to Rosslare has had well over a year added to its design as a direct result of section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. In Galway planning permission was granted for a ring road but was subsequently overturned on judicial review as a direct result of the same section. As a direct result of that court decision, all motorway projects now have to have a separate assessment as to the extra carbon that is going to be generated in an area. When we are building a motorway, that in and of itself is a critical piece of infrastructure and it is not possible to offset motorway journeys by adding cycle lanes or segregated pedestrian walkways. The motorway in Wexford was ready to go An Coimisiún Pleanála for planning permission right up until the moment the High Court made its decision in that judicial review case on the Galway ring road to quash the planning permission because it did not consider mitigation measures that were required. That has had a direct impact on the ability of Wexford County Council and TII to deliver that infrastructure project. I accept that an assessment should be done of any project in regard to what it is going to mean and what it is going to do to the environment. However, as against that, we must also consider the fact that some projects, like motorway infrastructure, are critical to the social and economic development of our country and should be designated as such. It is my long-held view that it is not possible to offset the carbon impact of a motorway by putting in extra cycle lanes and walkways alongside that road. There are already existing roads for people to walk and cycle on, separate to the motorway.
This is a critical element of this legislation. I am disappointed to hear that the Labour Party does not agree with it and will not be supporting the Bill as a result. I have a very different policy perspective. It is important to have these debates. Motorway infrastructure, like the motorway running from Belfast right the whole way down the east coast of Ireland, around the M50 and all the way down to Rosslare Europort, could have been through planning at this stage, gone to tender and potentially even have started by now had that section not applied and had that judicial review case not been taken. That case ultimately changed the entire environment. It was a weaponisation of environmental legislation to stymie infrastructure projects like this motorway. I appreciate that is not the opinion or view of everybody in this Chamber but it is my view and I welcome the fact that we are in the position of being able to disallow section 7.

---

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/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16