Enabling infrastructure and construction

The National Development Plan Review 2025, published in July 2025, provides €275.4 billion to address the State’s “infrastructure deficit”, increase housing delivery, and enable underlying infrastructure for greater private sector building.

This includes an allocation of €102.4 billion to government departments for capital investment over the period 2026-2030. Almost €24 billion in additional capital funding has been allocated relative to the previous National Development Plan (NDP) 2021-2030 ceilings.

The review aims to facilitate balanced regional development and contribute to climate obligations. Delivery of housing is identified as the “core ambition” of the review.

It identifies prioritisation of housing, energy, water, transport, and health digitalisation as key to the Government’s target of delivering 300,000 additional homes by 2030. The review notes constraints to delivery including the State’s fiscal parameters, labour shortages, timelines for planning, and inflationary pressures.

Additionally, the review asserts that delivery of projects has faced challenges including judicial reviews of successful planning decisions, additional environmental consents, and labour shortages.

Project prioritisation under the review is guided by critical infrastructure investment priorities identified in the PfG; sectors’ capacity to deliver proposed projects; the cost of proposals balanced against conflicting priorities and capital funding levels; and projects’ alignment with housing delivery and economic competitiveness.

A total of €10 billion has been provided for the period 2026-2030 to support delivery of large projects in the water, energy, and transport sectors including:

• €3.5 billion to ESB and EirGrid in 2025 to fund enhanced energy grid capacity to support the Government’s housing and competitiveness objectives;
• €2 billion to Uisce Éireann to 2025 to deliver 300,000 additional homes to 2030;
• a further €2.5 billion to Uisce Éireann for large scale projects to 2030; and
• €2 billion from the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund for low-carbon transportation such as MetroLink.

For the period 2026-30, the Department of Housing is provided with €35.95 billion in the review. This is split with €7.68 billion provided to water and €28.27 billion provided to “housing and other”. The Department of Transport receives €22.33 billion, while the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment receives €5.64 billion.

An allocation of €7.55 billion is provided to the Department of Education and Youth for construction of school places in primary, post-primary, special classes, and special schools for the period 2026-2030.

Construction sector analysis

The review states that construction sector employment reached 177,000 in Q1 2025, “the highest level in over a decade”. It adds: “Meeting the scale of the project pipeline outlined in this NDP will require a significant and sustained expansion of the construction workforce.”

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) estimates that 80,000 additional construction workers will be required to meet existing infrastructure targets including housing and retrofit. However, if construction sector productivity increased to average high-income European levels, 20,000 fewer additional workers would be required, the IFAC estimates.

“Our plan to invest in our capital infrastructure and address our infrastructure deficit is the best way to safeguard our economy, drive growth, protect jobs, increase competitiveness and ensure prosperity for our people and communities at a time of growing international uncertainty.”
Minister Jack Chambers TD

Construction sector analysis by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science finds that 10,000 few new entrants would be required if there is widespread adoption of modern methods of construction (MMC).

Delivery to date

The review outlines delivery of projects under the NDP to date including 170km of new roads, over 1,200km of active travel infrastructure, and completion of almost 53,000 new local authority scheme dwellings.

Furthermore, it says 100,000 premises have been connected to high-speed broadband through the National Broadband Plan, a new city campus for TU Dublin has been developed, and 800 school building projects have been completed with 300 more under construction.

The review outlines that the Government has allocated over €550 million for shared island projects including the commencement of construction of the Narrow Water Bridge, launch of phase two of the Ulster Canal restoration, and the hourly rail service between Dublin and Belfast.

Minister of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform Jack Chambers TD established the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce to identify barriers to delivery of infrastructure on time. In December 2025, the Department published taskforce’s findings in the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan.

It outlines four key pillars under which to tackle barriers to infrastructure development: legal reform; regulatory reform and simplification; co-ordination and delivery reform; and public acceptance.

Minister Chambers says: “Our plan to invest in our capital infrastructure and address our infrastructure deficit is the best way to safeguard our economy, drive growth, protect jobs, increase competitiveness and ensure prosperity for our people and communities at a time of growing international uncertainty.”

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Public Expenditure and Reform, Mairéad Farrell TD, says: “We want to see real progress and finally get a handle on the housing and healthcare crisis. But as they say the devil is in the detail, and right now many of those details are still missing.

“We are still left wondering where all this money is going to go, how they will address the current bottlenecks, and whether ‘value for money’ will just be another political cliché.”