The Government has promised to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure in Ireland as a vital element of its revised National Development Plan, which outlines State investment spending up to 2030. How to achieve this is the question.
Reform in the way State cash is allocated is one change which we are told is already in train. And the new Planning Act may also help. But more will be needed. To help plan this, Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chamber, has appointed the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, chaired by Sean O’Driscoll, the former chief executive of Glen Dimplex, to advise on how to proceed.
Following the receipt of a report drawn up by his Department reflecting the views of interests involved in infrastructure delivery, the taskforce is getting to work. The analysis is clear enough. Infrastructure and housing projects are mired in regulations and increasingly threatened by judicial review. This has led the administrative and regulatory system to take an overly-cautious approach – in part for fear of not ticking all the boxes and facing legal challenges. Beyond that, there have been clear issues in terms of project planning and oversight, of which the National Children’s Hospital is just one example.
Finding the solutions is not straightforward, but there are a few guiding principles which the taskforce needs to abide by.
READ MORE
The first is a recognition that the whole system is now dysfunctional. The wider national interest is taking second place to that of objectors. A balance is needed, for sure, but as of now the impact of the system of regulation and previous legal decisions is to cause endless delay and uncertainty. A State in which it takes seven years to deliver an electricity substation is not an efficient one.
The second and related imperative for the group is the need to be radical. Fiddling around at the edges will achieve little. Addressing some of the key issues is not straightforward in a common law system and the committee will need to consider to what extent legislation can help , particularly relating to major national projects. But these projects are so central to people’s lives and to economic progress that delays are hugely costly. Ireland is, for example, judged as the slowest county in the EU for consents for renewable energy projects. Again, it is a question of balance.
The third job for the taskforce will be to ruffle feathers - it needs to be unpopular. As it is composed of private and public sector appointees, consensus may not be easy. But successive governments, departments, State agencies, regulators , the legal system– and the private sector – have all come up short. Failures need to be called out. With billions extra to be spent in the years ahead , Ireland needs to recognise its shortcomings honestly and then address them .
