Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 June 2023
45. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform in relation to recent reform of the public spending code, to outline how said reforms will achieve greater speed and efficiency; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30982/23]
View answerThe public spending code was updated in December 2019. When will the infrastructure guidelines be published on the public spending code? Will the Minister outline how the changes announced so far will increase speed and efficiency in the delivery of capital projects? The key to delivering a project on time and on budget is to get the design and the planning phase right. There are no magic shortcuts. The national children's hospital delays and the skyrocketing costs were not caused by any administrative budget. I am not sure if the public spending code will achieve again what we need it to achieve here. I ask for the Minister's reassurance on that.
I am responsible for the public spending code, which sets the value-for-money requirements and guidance for evaluating, planning and managing Exchequer-funded capital projects. In March this year, I informed the Government of a package of significant actions aimed at enhancing project delivery for the national development plan, NDP. This package represented a fresh approach to securing delivery as part of the Department's enhanced remit around the NDP.
The actions include significant changes to reduce the administrative burden for Departments and public bodies developing capital projects. Some specific changes designed to streamline the project life cycle and approval process include the general threshold for major projects increasing from €100 million to €200 million, allowing for projects below this limit to progress more speedily through the appraisal and evaluation process. Changes also include the reduction of the number of approval stages prior to implementation from five to three, reducing the administrative burden on Government Departments charged with developing and delivering projects. Another change is the removal of the requirement for a project to prepare a separate strategic assessment report, SAR, at the start of the process. All the requirements previously required as part of a SAR must now be completed and incorporated as part of the preliminary business case at the first approval stage.
The changes have already been implemented through Government Circular 06/2023. Further appraisal guidance will be published shortly, known as the infrastructure guidelines, which will replace the existing public spending code.
In that case, it remains unclear to me how the reforms the Minister has outlined will make any substantial difference in terms of the speed of project delivery. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael McGrath, alluded to that when he said that the timelines associated with public spending code compliance are a fraction of the time required for compliance. I need to see how it is going to speed up the projects that we need to do, in the context of delivery.
Any process that reduces the number of steps that need to be taken and decreases the number of projects that need to go through a more thorough and broader evaluation process, which we have done by increasing the threshold from €100 million to €200 million, is going to help with speed. I anticipate that the improvements for projects overall in how much time will be saved by this will be measured in months. Every month helps.
