Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 31 January 2023
230. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Transport the average time for a project to go from gate zero to gate six construction; and the timelines involved in previous projects in the past 20 years that went through those gates. [4604/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Public Spending Code, published in 2013, is the set of roles, procedures and guidance to ensure value-for-money in public expenditure across the Irish Public Service. The Code applies to all organisations that spend public money. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform reviewed and updated the Code in 2019 and the updates were applied from 1 January 2020.
There are four Decision Gates in the Public Spending Code lifecycle. These are:
- Decision Gate 0 - Reached on completion of the Strategic Assessment Report, in which the project rationale, objectives, and list of options is set out
- Decision Gate 1 - Reached on completion of the Preliminary Business Case for the project
- Decision Gate 2 - Reached on completion of the Detailed Project Brief and Procurement Strategy
- Decision Gate 3 - Reached on completion of the Final Business Case
It should be noted that Gate 0 approval was only introduced in 2019 when the Code was revised. Only when a project is approved at Gate 3 does it have approval to proceed to construction.
The time in which it takes any particular project to reach each of these Decision Gates varies from project to project, depending on the length of time it takes to develop the project and pass through any necessary statutory processes. Average timelines do not reflect the complexity of individual projects and given the length of time the current version of the code has been in place it is not possible to provide such a time at this point.
