Billionaire tech founder John Collison’s comments on Ireland’s lethargic development of housing and infrastructure are “food for thought” for the Department of the Taoiseach.
Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has said Government infrastructure reforms will focus on “much” of the issues raised by Mr Collison, while a spokesman for Micheál Martin agreed with the Stripe founder on his comments about the slow pace of big projects.
In an essay Mr Collison wrote for The Irish Times, the 35-year-old Limerick native argued that too many regulators, government departments, public agencies and non-governmental organisations had placed too many constraints on large-scale infrastructure projects.
A spokesman for the Taoiseach said that “John Collison’s comments certainly are food for thought.”
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“He is quite right in identifying the exponential growth of the Irish population as a key factor on the demand on infrastructure. It does take too long for infrastructure projects to get completed,” the spokesman said, adding that “a significant issue has been the heavy legal framework that has built up over the decades, both EU directives and national laws. We need to simplify that”.
“In the 1970s there were less hurdles to getting things done quickly, but we now have higher standards of housing. Beyond all that, we see too many projects end up in the courts and in judicial reviews, rather than being dealt with through the planning system.” The spokesman said that reforms of the Planning Act being enacted now “should make a difference”.
Mr Chambers told The Irish Times that “infrastructure taskforce reforms will incorporate a lot of change and is focused on responding to much of what he has highlighted”.
Mr Collison, who set up the payment technology firm with his brother Patrick in 2010, was praised by Tánaiste Simon Harris for his “thought-provoking” intervention on Ireland’s failings on housing and infrastructure.
“Too many layers, too many structures, processes that take too long. Time for the pendulum to swing back. This will be a big part of my work and focus with colleagues in the months ahead,” Mr Harris said on X on Sunday.
“Streamlining processes, cutting through red tape and speeding up delivery must be at the core of all we do.”
It is understood the Stripe co-founder’s intervention, in which he also argued politicians have ceded too much power to unelected officials, has become a major subject of discussion on both the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael backbenches.
Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne said he was now looking to ask Mr Collison to address his parliamentary party.
Noting that the number of civil servants has increased by nearly 50 per cent in the past decade, Mr Byrne told The Irish Times there should be weekly meetings where officials are forced to account for the pace of housing and infrastructure projects.
“The biggest frustration I have in politics is how long it takes for decisions to be made and for people wanting to lead. The public good requires us to treat delivering housing and infrastructure as urgent,” he said, adding: “I don’t get that sense of urgency.”
He said elected representatives “have ceded too much power to State agencies and unelected individuals who don’t share the urgency of tackling major challenges, particularly housing.”
Fine Gael TD Colm Burke said Ministers are “frustrated within departments where people are saying you can’t do this or you can’t do that”.
“We’ve got to get our act together,” he said, describing Mr Collison’s argument concerning over-regulation and ceded power as “dead right”.
He pointed to an example in his own constituency of Cork North Central, where road infrastructure near the Apple European headquarters in Hollyhill has remained unchanged for decades, despite more than 6,000 people being employed at the site.
“We are now talking about doing an urban distributor road there. Even if we agree on the route in the morning, it will still take us five years before any work will start,” he said.
Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan, who also agreed with Mr Collison’s assessment, said while Ireland had “world-class talent”, it sometimes had “third-world delivery”.
The party’s spokesman on Dublin said for too long essential projects have been “trapped in a web of bureaucracy and endless legal challenges”.
He said new tools such as capping legal fees for judicial review cases “must be used boldly”, adding that those who take such cases “should have some skin in the game”.
