In April of this year, I announced Government had agreed a series of actions to accelerate the delivery of strategic infrastructure in Ireland. This work, led by my Department, will first identify and assess the barriers impeding the delivery of critical infrastructure across many sectors, including electricity, energy, transport and water. We will then publish an action plan which will target high-impact reform measures to address the barriers identified and speed up the development of this critical State infrastructure. This work is being done because the availability of infrastructure in these sectors is particularly impeding our ability to provide for the needs of a growing population in housing and to improve the competitiveness of the economy. At the moment, my Department is finalising the systematic, evidence-based review of the most impactful barriers to the timely development of infrastructure. This review is informed by research undertaken by officials in my Department, contributions provided by the accelerating infrastructure task force, evidence from direct engagement with key stakeholders, which remains ongoing, and the more than 170 contributions received via public consultation between 6 June and 4 July. This is in addition to input sought at the national economic dialogue on 16 June and a consultation event in Athlone on 18 June. I expect to receive an interim report from my officials on the most significant barriers to infrastructure development by the end of July. As I noted, this assessment of barriers is a critical input to the overall objective of this work programme, which is the development of an action plan to accelerate infrastructure provision. I expect to bring an ambitious action plan to Government in autumn, to publish it and move on to the work of implementing the agreed reforms. In advance of this, I can share some of the key themes on barriers to infrastructure that have been expressed by stakeholders through the direct engagement and the public consultation. They are satisfied that infrastructure, once delivered, is of a high quality but the universal view is that the development of infrastructure in Ireland takes far too long. Stakeholders attribute the lengthy development cycles-----
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I can continue later.
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Private wires are an essential part of developing the wider need on energy and digital infrastructure. What I was about to say was that some of the lengthy development cycles and regulatory complexity and fragmentation across regulatory bodies is extremely problematic. Too much uncertainty and delay is driven by legal, planning and consenting processes. There is also the issue of capacity concerns in the public and private sectors, as well as the lack of realistic and specific State project pipelines. Additionally, there is some insufficient public acceptance of critical infrastructure to grow our economy. On the direct point made by the Deputy concerning north Dublin, social infrastructure is obviously part of our wider capital allocation that we advance. It is then a matter for each Department to prioritise the social infrastructure in respect of different communities. We have significant programmes across the State, whether in sports capital, the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht or, indeed, other parts of the Government that provide for significant social infrastructure across the State. Part of the national development plan will be to continue this over the period.
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If we look at the national planning framework and all the different existing policies, it is about complementing housing delivery with community infrastructure and social infrastructure. We have had significantly increased supports for the development of social infrastructure across the State. In the last Government, we had one of the biggest interventions around developing community and sports infrastructure, for example, which is being seen right across north Dublin and in many other parts of the country. Similarly, there is the work the then Minister Heather Humphreys did at the time concerning the wider social infrastructure across the State. There was a massive uplift in support. Regarding the issue the Deputy referred to in Clongriffin, I have not seen a specific allocation in that regard, except to say we are committed to social infrastructure in our wider national development plan and this will continue over the next five years to give headroom to Departments and Ministers to complement housing delivery and economic infrastructure with the need to build sustainable communities. This is why transport infrastructure is extremely important in parallel as well.
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