Ceisteanna ó na Comhaltaí Eile - Other Members’ Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

I thank Deputy Neville for raising this issue. I also thank him for his ongoing work on infrastructure and for being my party's spokesperson on infrastructure. I was pleased that we visited Intel recently in his county. Intel has shown a real vote of confidence in Kildare but also in the Irish economy.
Deputy Neville is right that we are investing an extraordinary amount in capital. More than a quarter of a trillion euro will be spent on infrastructure in this country in the timeline the Deputy outlined.
With that opportunity comes great responsibility to make sure projects are delivered, with value for money to the fore but also with speed and efficiency. There is obviously a cost to the projects not being in place in the here and now. We still live in a country where public infrastructure can be somewhere between 25% and 30% below the EU average. We all know there are real infrastructural choke points in our constituencies and communities, whether it is water, energy, wastewater, transport or social infrastructure such as schools and hospitals and, of course, housing as well.
The Deputy is right to point to the fact that there are a lot of things this country does well. The national broadband plan was pretty much universally opposed by most political parties in this House but people now herald it in their own constituency, are delighted with the connections and are happy to turn up to the events. We backed the national broadband plan. It has come in on budget and it has come in ahead. It has made this country the most connected country in the European Union. It has made rural Ireland, including farmyards, extraordinarily connected as well. It was something nobody else in this place wanted but we backed it and it was the right decision to make.
There have also been times when things have not gone right in relation to infrastructure. The work the Minister, Deputy Jack Chambers, has done deserves great credit in terms of looking at how we can accelerate infrastructure and what we have done as a Government in bringing the private sector in with the public sector. I never buy this idea put forward by some people that the private sector can just run everything. No, the public sector has an important role to play too, but collaboration between the private and public sector can be really good. Bringing in private sector expertise - I think of the likes of Sean O'Driscoll - along with public sector people to sit around a table and ask what we need to accelerate infrastructure delivery has now given us our action plan. We have seen 95% of the commitments already delivered. All 30 actions in the plan actually remain on track.
We have already seen the benefits in speeding it up. There have been 26 weeks saved on the Waterford wastewater treatment plant, which the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, will be pleased to hear. There have been 26 weeks saved on the Ballymore Eustace to Saggart main water project, Deputy Neville will be pleased to hear. That is due to the removal of external reviews and changes in thresholds within the infrastructure guidelines. We have seen 12 months taken off the greater Dublin drainage project. We have seen timelines for maritime area consents now reduced by 30% for fit bodies. This is already having a really positive effect. The ESB is receiving quicker decisions from An Coimisiún Pleanála and well below the statutory timeline of 48 weeks. With MetroLink, we saw the withdraw of the judicial review speeding up the project. We have passed the Critical Infrastructure Act as well. We have a lot of work to do but the reforms in the action plan are beginning to take hold and we have to drive them on every day.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24