Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 June 2023
42. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to outline progress towards enhancing productivity in the construction sector, including utilising modern methods of construction as committed to in the programme for Government; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30983/23]
View answerWill the Minister outline the progress towards enhancing productivity in the construction sector, including the utilisation of modern methods of construction, MMC, as committed to in the programme for Government? The programme states:
Work to enhance productivity in the construction sector includes utilising modern methods of construction. This work will be guided by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform.
Given the ongoing housing crisis, will the Minister outline the progress he has made in promoting the use of MMC and the impact that has had on the productivity of the construction sector?
My Department has continued to work closely with the construction sector through the construction sector group, CSG, to improve productivity and delivery capacity. The CSG provides a useful forum for engagement with the sector on these issues. The Building Innovation report published by my Department has identified a range of actions to drive innovation in the sector. There are 43 actions in this report. These are being progressed by key industry players such as the Construction Industry Federation, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, RIAI, Engineers Ireland, and the Office of Government Procurement, OGP.
To drive the delivery of seven specific actions from the Building Innovation report, an innovation and digital adoption subgroup of the CSG has been established. Important initiatives that have been launched include the build digital project to look at how we can better digitise the construction sector; construct innovate, to provide and fund cutting edge research; and the demonstration park for modern methods of construction to showcase innovative building techniques. The build digital project is funded through a €2.5 million grant from my Department and is led by Technological University Dublin. This project will support the construction sector to deliver future public projects to a higher standard using digital efficiencies. Furthermore, a leadership and integration group, led by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, has been established. This group will ensure a co-ordinated approach between new and existing entities of new building methods and will focus on the risks, challenges, and barriers to promote modern methods of construction. The group has commenced looking at the environment we have in this country for MMC, and to facilitate the further development of this sector, we will be shortly publishing a procurement roadmap to help facilitate the acceleration of these kind of technologies.
I thank the Minister. This is the way forward in procurement but I will quote David Browne, a member of the RIAI, last month when the organisation was before the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage:
Modern methods of construction, if adopted at scale in Ireland, can have an important role to play in meeting the targets of the National Development Plan by helping to address current significant productivity, labour and skills challenges. It is important to understand that the application of modern methods in both public and private sectors in Ireland cannot be achieved by the construction sector acting alone.
Procurement is highlighted as one of the key areas of reform. The Minister is saying that this is planned. It is hugely important. The most powerful tool available to him to promote the use of MMC is the leverage procurement.
The State is the biggest spender in the economy. Public procurement amounts to approximately €20 billion per year. Will the Minister commit to using public procurement to facilitate the adoption of modern methods of construction? That would give us the scale.
I thank the Deputy. That is exactly what is under way at the moment. The value of a procurement framework is it provides an overall framework within which public bodies should have consistent standards for being able to procure services or goods and it is of help in making procurement processes work more efficiently. For that reason, we are now looking at the roll-out, as I said a moment ago, of a procurement roadmap for these various technologies. I would be happy to find more exact timings on it for the Deputy as there is great potential in it and the Deputy obviously agrees.
I am glad we agree on that. I would be interested in the timescale for that. Will the Minister work with the line Departments to implement mandated targets for the use of modern methods of construction in public sector programmes to establish that consistent level of demand? If targets are put in there, that will bring extra focus into what we are trying to achieve here.
I will certainly think about it. I appreciate the point the Deputy is making that we should have a target for the number of homes delivered via modern methods of construction. I can definitely see the logic of that. The only thing is, I would not want to agree to any further targets that make the delivery of our overall housing targets even more complex than it already is. Where we agree is these technologies, if deployed at scale, can make a big difference. I have seen some examples recently that I have been a bit taken aback by. I have been impressed by the amount of preconstruction happening for housing projects that is not done on the site where the homes are going to be and the difference that is now making to the delivery of a really big housing project. I am reluctant to commit to a subtarget because for me the target in housing delivery is all, but as I said, I will come back to the Deputy with more exact timings on the roadmap for procurement because I agree the more scale we grow in there, the better it can help deliver our housing targets in a way that is consistent with all our other goals, especially from a climate perspective. Procurement is a huge tool for doing that.
