Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 26 October 2023
7. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform the extent to which he and his Department continue to utilise reform as a means of creating a greater efficiency in the delivery of various Government projects throughout the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46712/23]
View answer36. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform in the context of his delivery of the NDP, the extent to which he has isolated issues likely to culminate in delays in such delivery; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46711/23]
View answerThis particular question pertains to ascertaining the extent to which reform can be employed to dislodge obstacles to the delivery of the national development plan, NDP, throughout the country and in my own constituency.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 and 36 together.
The Government has committed to €165 billion in capital investment through the national development plan published in 2021. As a percentage of national income, annual capital investment is now among the largest in the European Union. In 2023, almost €13 billion will fund vital infrastructure in areas such as housing, transport, education, enterprise, sport and climate action. Achieving value for money and reducing cost and schedule overruns form a vital part of delivering the national development plan.
The Government and I acknowledge the significant investment under the NDP does not come without delivery challenges. As the Deputy knows, delivery of some projects has been adversely impacted over the past three years as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. I am acutely aware in particular of the challenges the construction industry has faced in terms of material price inflation, labour supply constraints and supply chain disruption. As a result of this, to safeguard the delivery of important projects, in January 2022, my Department introduced measures to address inflation for new contracts and tenders. Furthermore, in May 2022, a new set of measures to apportion additional inflation costs between the parties to public works contracts were introduced.
Nonetheless, no one is any doubt that the need to ensure timely project delivery must be part of the Government’s focus to respond effectively to the pressing challenges of our time, especially, of course, in housing, health and climate. The renaming of my Department as the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform has brought about a greater emphasis and mandate for the delivery of the NDP. Therefore, we have taken the following six actions: significant changes to reduce the administrative burden in delivering major capital projects; I am now chairing the Project Ireland 2040 delivery board; capacity reviews of Departments and agencies with significant delivery programmes to be carried out to ensure we have the adequate resources in place for project delivery; additional reforms to the capital works management framework; direct reporting to Government on NDP delivery on a quarterly basis; and an independent evaluation of the priorities of the national development plan and the capacity our economy needs to turn these priorities into new homes and schools and improved connectivity in our country.
I thank the Minister for his reply. Can I ask, by way of supplementary, about the extent to which efforts have been made to isolate the individual items that have caused delays in particular locations and the cause or causes of them? What is the viability of coming to grips with them and resolving them in the short term given the delivery of the national development plan is dependent on the resolution of any such issues and recognising that while the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact, there are other issues that have impacts as well?
The process for that tends to be that Ministers and their Departments identify any individual project, particularly high-profile projects, that may be affected by the impact of inflation and some of the other factors the Deputy has touched on. In the past year or so, we still managed to make progress on the majority of such individual projects, moving some of them to construction, a number through the planning process, and others through the business case evaluation process within my Department and the parent Department that sponsors individual projects.
Up to this point, my sense is we have managed to make progress on the majority of bigger stand-alone projects. If the Deputy has any particular project where he feels this is not the case, I am sure he will raise it with me now or at another point.
The Minister should not invite me to. I thank him for his reply. I have in mind a number of projects in my constituency regarding traffic management and alleviation of snarl-ups in various towns, including Naas but in particular Maynooth, where there is a massive logjam. Millions of euro were allocated 20 years ago and not a penny of them has been spent yet for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the Minister might get involved in that as a means of identifying the particular reasons and how they could be shortlisted.
I could not let the occasion pass without mentioning the issue in my constituency at Castletown in Celbridge, where the local population and residents are unfairly demonised through a series of implications that they are responsible for the issue. In fact, the first infraction was by the Department itself and by the Office of Public Works, OPW, which sought to rearrange the front gates in accordance with what it saw as an emergency. I do not agree, it is very unfair, and I ask the Minister to take a personal interest to resolve the matter as soon as possible.
In my constituency there are two projects, the Mallow relief road, which I have discussed previously, and the N25 upgrade. Millions have been spent on both of those projects to bring them to design stage. Properties on the routes have been sterilised and houses cannot be sold. Property owners were left in the lurch when, for no reason whatsoever, both projects were stalled, even though the Department of Transport, I understand, handed back €7 million last year to the Department for public expenditure and reform. Will the Minister tell me if this good value for money? I understand it is going to cost a lot more to bring these projects back up and running again eventually.
On the six issues the Minister raised there, especially independent evaluation, will these kind of bizarre decisions be evaluated with a view to getting these projects up and running again, getting rid of the uncertainty and driving economic growth in these regions? Mallow town, for instance, is absolutely choked with traffic. The hope was that this would go ahead. It was right at the edge. Even Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, has written to the Department of Transport begging it to make it happen.
The national development plan saw some projects blocked for ideological reasons. They did not make it in, and yet the Minister and his colleagues in Cabinet had the foresight to put in some enabling text. Sometimes that sentence at the end of a plan facilitates the projects that others would like to kill off. It allows them to proceed. I do not want to get the Minister to comment on specific projects but I hope that spirit of facilitation will continue, and that little sentence at the end of the plan will allow some of those projects to proceed through their statutory phases of design, public consultation, etc. I hope the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, as Minister in that Department, will be the guardian of that little sentence because it matters an awful lot in counties such as mine, where we have been waiting 15 to 20 years for some projects. They are not dead yet, and they will outlive a lot of people who serve in this House because of that little paragraph of text.
I wanted to come in on that because there seems some kind of a miscommunication. As was rightly said by Deputy Stanton, there was an underspend in the Department of Transport, and yet projects like the N17 have been put on hold. They are absolutely vital to the economic development of the areas they serve. What is going on there? There are mixed messages coming, that in one sense they are committed to it but then they are being stalled or withdrawn. It is causing great concern across these areas.
There are a lot of questions there but we have limited time.
I will do my best, and I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I will deal with each of them in turn.
On Deputy Durkan's point, I took care with the words I used earlier in my first answer to him. I said projects would be moved along, but of course it is the case that many projects are not hitting the original timings that were anticipated for them. So many capital projects have been affected by where we have been with inflation and the unavoidable consequences of our construction sector being closed for so long during the pandemic. In my experience, projects are still moving ahead, but it is undoubtedly the case they are not hitting the original timings laid down for them in the NDP. Some of those reasons are beyond the control of the Government.
With regard to Castletown House, I acknowledge Deputy Durkan's long-standing interest in this topic. He contacted me and the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, in the early moments after this issue developed. I know the OPW and all of us are doing our best to try and find some way to resolve this issue. We also have to be conscious of the needs of the taxpayer and the fact there is a negotiation that happened and could happen again. I acknowledge the Deputy's interest in this matter and the case he is making for the resolution of this issue on behalf of the community. That will certainly be taken into account in our work on this issue in the time ahead.
To answer Deputy Stanton, it is a matter for each Minister to make decisions on the allocation of their own departmental budget for particular projects, and I have to respect that. It is the way the allocation of our budget works. I am aware of the long-standing interest the Deputy has in the Mallow relief road and the N25, which he has raised regularly with me here in the Dáil and elsewhere. I am aware of his views on this issue and his view regarding the need to make progress on them. I acknowledge that again.
In response to Deputy Crowe, I have written a few of those lines myself in the past and I am well aware of the importance of them. The current NDP will be the one that will see this Government out, but of course I am aware of the importance of that NDP and the signal it sends to local authorities and planning bodies.
To quickly conclude, with the indulgence of the Leas Cheann-Comhairle, Deputy Conway-Walsh raised the issue of a specific road project. I know the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is trying to make progress on many different transport projects at the moment, both public and road-based. As every Minister has to do, he is simply trying to allocate the funding that is available to him to make progress on as many things as possible at the current point. I will certainly raise, as I will those of Deputy Stanton, the views on those particular projects with the Minister.
