Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 11 May 2023
46. Deputy Matt Shanahan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform with respect to the national capital tracker, if his Department plans to provide an annual comparative analysis of annual spend by project and sector with respect to regional population benefit and cumulative capital spend in that region and sector over the previous three years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22058/23]
View answerAs Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, I have responsibility for setting the overall capital allocations across Departments. Management and delivery of individual investment projects within the allocations agreed under the NDP is a key responsibility of every Department and Minister.
Under the National Planning Framework (NPF), the three Regional Assemblies are now responsible for co-ordinating, promoting and supporting the strategic planning and sustainable development of their regions, consistent with the objectives of the NPF, through the preparation of Regional Spatial and Economic Strategies (RSES). These strategies help inform the targeting of public infrastructure investment at the regional and local level.
The Government is committed to detailing progress on the delivery of the NDP at regular intervals to allow for full transparency of the implementation of Project Ireland 2040. This is achieved through regular updates of the Project Ireland 2040 capital investment tracker and MyProjectIreland interactive map viewer which list projects and programmes on a regional and county level.
The capital tracker and interactive map are key tools in overseeing the progress of Project Ireland 2040 at a regional level. Their purpose is to facilitate communication, monitoring and planning of investments and to inform citizens of the variety of projects currently in the planning and construction phase in their local regions. The latest editions of the Project Ireland 2040 capital investment tracker and interactive map, were published on the gov.ie/2040 website in February. The tracker includes comprehensive details on almost 320 large scale projects and 140 individual programmes, while the interactive map database includes an exhaustive overview of 1,240 individual projects. Since the launch of the first NDP in 2018, the capital tracker has been regularly updated and contains comprehensive project updates detailing a brief outline of the project; the Department or Body responsible for delivering the project; the location and region of the project; the type of investment which links it to specific sectors; the alignment of the project with the National Planning Framework’s 10 National Strategic Outcomes; the current status of the project; the construction commencement date of the project; the completion or anticipated completion date of the project; the current stage of the project lifecycle as per the Public Spending Code and finally, there is also information on the project cost range of each project, except where commercial sensitivities arise or the project is still in the planning stage and the costs are subject to appraisal. All of this information can be filtered and sorted by the user into their required data fields.
In addition, Regional Reports on the implementation of Project Ireland 2040 have been published for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, with an update for 2022 scheduled to be published in the coming months. The reports set out the projects and programmes, which are being planned and delivered in the three Regions, as part of the public investment detailed in Project Ireland 2040. While the reports do not provide an exhaustive list of all public capital expenditure, they serve to highlight the diverse range of investments being made by the State under Project Ireland 2040 in the region.
