Action Plan for Rural Development Dail Éireann — 2026-05-28 ============================================================ Jack Chambers (FF), Dublin West A practical example is the wastewater treatment plant in respect of which 26 weeks have been saved due to the removal of the external assurance process and reviews, as well as changes to the thresholds that I introduced in reforms to the infrastructure guidelines. The latter was an additional step that added time. Under the wider assessment carried out last year, we had to measure the time it had taken some of these processes against the cost of delay. That example of the wastewater treatment plant should be replicated across other projects Irish Water will be progressing through its project development lifecycle. Similarly, the greater Dublin drainage project, is a multimillion megaproject being done by Irish Water. Due to some of the changes we have made, Irish Water has, with confidence, been able to bring the completion date forward by 12 months, which will give greater confidence in the context of construction and housing supply in the medium term. This is a critical project for the delivery of housing supply along the east coast. However, we also have multiple other areas across transport and energy. We have work ongoing by the joint utilities and transport clearing house, which has identified ten specific barriers or challenges to co-ordination across utilities or delivery bodies in Departments and agencies. These are being worked through by my Department in order to save time and improve co-ordination. We are seeing improvements, but we have other changes we have to make. I have spoken about improved risk appetite in the public service, and I will be publishing risk appetite statements and bringing them to Government in the coming weeks. This will ensure that we increase the risk appetite to get things done and to deal with some of the risk aversion we have seen. We have also made changes to environmental legal fees. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and I signed the regulation in that regard to cap fees, which was one of the legal reforms referenced. The Minister for justice, Deputy O'Callaghan, is advancing the placement of judicial reviews on a statutory footing with the civil reform Bill. Obviously, once we enact the Critical Infrastructure Bill, we will be able to commence a process of designation which will help to fast-track several projects. I know from our engagement with utilities in the context of energy, transport and water sectors, that there is much greater confidence in the construction sector because of what we progressed under the national development plan. Planned projects in regions, towns and villages now have the headroom and pipeline from a sectoral investment perspective, which will help bring confidence to this. --- 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/dail/2026-05-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-28