The report published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform this week on accelerating the provision of infrastructure in Ireland must lead to change. And pushing this through is a key task for Ministers.
However, reading it also leads to some reflection on the scale of the opportunity Ireland has missed in recent years. During a time of plenty in the public finances, the scale of which may never be repeated, Ireland has not made the most of the available resources. The previous government took its eye off the ball. Major projects were not progressing, caught in a diplomatic and legal quagmire. Yet little was done and the result is now clear; a housing crisis and creaking infrastructure in areas like water and energy which threaten the policy response to this, as well as undermining the confidence of business investors.
A host of problems identified in the report have been clearly evident for years: overly-complicated regulation, often with little purpose; decisions left to the courts due to judicial reviews; and an administrative system stuck in a pattern of risk aversion. The number of judicial reviews of planning decisions continues to rise, up 20 per cent this year on 2024. Many of these are on environmental grounds, but the report finds “little evidence” that they are leading to better outcomes.
The threat of legal review is also found to be driving an overly-cautious approach among regulatory bodies. The report might also have taken a closer look at the role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform itself. After all, it is the body responsible for the spending of State money and this goes beyond a requirement to watch the pennies.
RM Block
This report, completed by the new infrastructure division in the department, is now to be forwarded to a special Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, a mix of private sector expertise and the key players from the public sector, chaired by Sean O’Driscoll, former chairman and chief executive of the Glen Dimplex Group. An action plan and recommended policy changes are to follow.
There is clearly much to be done. The Government will hope that the new Planning Act can help, including by tightening the rules on judicial reviews. But a sweep of Ireland’s regulatory practices is also needed. The planning application for Uisce Éireann’s big project taking water from the Shannon to serve the Midlands and Dublin regions will likely extend to more than 30,000 pages. Proper oversight of such a major project is essential, but this scale of paperwork serves no useful purpose.
Senior ministers, presenting the revised National Development Plan, made great play of talking about reforming delivery. They made no reference to the fact that they had all been in government when these problems were hiding in plain sight.
