Accelerating infrastructure delivery

Ireland is at a pivotal moment: our economy is strong, and our population is growing, but infrastructure delivery has not kept pace, writes Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation Jack Chambers TD.

This current sluggish nature of infrastructure development demands faster action and greater ambition. This government has placed infrastructure delivery at the heart of its ambitions and as minister with responsibility for infrastructure, my focus is on putting in place both the investment and the reforms necessary to grasp this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

Success will require alignment across government, industry, and communities. I am confident, from speaking to individuals, businesses, and political representatives across the country, that there is an understanding of the need to radically transform how Ireland delivers infrastructure, for the current generation and generations to come.

National Development Plan Review

The delivery of essential infrastructure is a key driver in ensuring our economy’s competitiveness and resilience. In the past five years, there has been more than €65 billion invested in capital infrastructure projects across our country to improve people’s lives through the National Development Plan (NDP), with total capital investment in 2026 estimated at €19.1 billion. This represents the highest annual spend to date in this country.

While this funding has delivered a significant amount of infrastructure including roads, houses, schools, hospitals and more, all of which have improved the lives of the people living in Ireland, the Programme for Government recognised that more investment is needed to address infrastructure deficits.

In July 2025, we reaffirmed that commitment with a revised NDP that will deliver transformational investment to safeguard Ireland’s future.

€102 billion is being allocated for the next five years, an additional €33.9 billion on what was previously allocated in the NDP, with a further €100 billion for the period 2030 to 2035. In total, €275 billion of public capital investment is allocated for the period to 2035.

This scale of investment is not simply a matter of upgrading infrastructure; it is about safeguarding the economy, protecting jobs, enhancing competitiveness, and ensuring prosperity for communities at a time of global volatility. In line with the Programme for Government, we are directing resources toward the critical sectors that underpin growth: housing, water, energy, and transport. By investing in these building blocks, we are laying the foundation for Ireland’s future.
Key investment allocations to support delivery of our 300,000 new homes target include:

• a total of €3.5 billion in equity has been earmarked for ESB Networks and Eirgrid;
• €12.2 billion for the water sector for water and wastewater services; and
• €24.3 billion for the transport sector, including low carbon transport projects such as Metrolink.

Sectoral investment plans were published by government departments at the end of 2025, providing the construction and built environment sector with a clear and structured pipeline of projects to be delivered over the next five years.

Accelerating infrastructure

Even with the necessary investment and a structured project pipeline in place, the path from planning to delivery remains far from straightforward. Additional expenditure alone cannot address infrastructure deficits. From planning to procurement, from environmental assessment to final approval, the infrastructure development cycle has become increasingly complex and uncertain.
Today’s landscape is shaped by successive reforms aimed at addressing regulatory requirements, environmental protection, value for money and public participation. Each of these goals is important and was developed with the best of intentions. However, consideration of the cumulative impact that each additional requirement imposes on the development of infrastructure and the risks of delay this creates has been missing.

“Prioritising the common good, through consistent leadership, clear decision-making, and a shared commitment to delivery, is essential to ensuring Ireland’s infrastructure keeps pace with demand.”

There is strong evidence that the development lifecycle for infrastructure is lengthening considerably. Uisce Éireann has assessed that the development time for a small wastewater treatment project in Ireland is seven to 10 years. This is four to five years longer than the delivery timeline for similar sized projects in other EU member states.

ESB Networks notes that the development cycle for a basic electricity substation has now reached five to six years for a typical project, while a more complex development may take 8.5 years. Major road projects can now have a development cycle of up to 15 years. In essence, it appears that development timelines have, in many cases, approximately doubled compared to the development cycles typical of just 20 years ago.

These delays are not abstract problems. They have real-world implications. Each delay translates into higher costs, missed opportunities, and mounting pressure on essential services.

When water and electricity systems cannot keep pace with demand, housing delivery slows. Constraints on secure, affordable, low carbon energy directly affect energy costs, competitiveness, employment, and progress toward climate commitments. And when transport networks lag behind growth, we see greater congestion, higher operating costs, and huge frustration for businesses and communities and more time lost for people.

We also know that the current development cycle, characterised by slow processes and significant delays, demands a step change in both pace and ambition.

The Programme for Government, published in January 2025, was very clear that the ambition was to secure our future with the delivery of critical infrastructure as the key driver of this objective. All government bodies, with leadership from my department, are now tasked with reassessing how they prioritise their work and remit to ensure that they are supporting the objectives of government in delivering critical infrastructure.

Government launched the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan in December 2025. This report sets out a comprehensive programme of reforms to break through inertia and accelerate the delivery of infrastructure that our people, communities, and businesses urgently need.

The action plan addresses 12 key barriers that were identified through stakeholder consultation and sets out 30 specific, time-bound actions to speed up the pace of infrastructure delivery in Ireland.

Reform actions are structured around four pillars:

• legal reform;
• regulatory reform and simplification;
• co-ordination and delivery reform; and
• public acceptance.

These measures provide for a whole-of-government approach, with ownership of actions spread across the public service. Taken together, these actions will ensure that the unprecedented levels of capital investment translate into timely, coordinated delivery of the infrastructure essential for our country’s long-term growth. My focus is on ensuring that the positive impact of these actions is tangible in communities throughout the country and we build abundance in our economy and society, so we deliver the essential public services, amenities and infrastructure our communities need, at pace and at scale.

Time is of the essence, and implementation of these actions is already underway. Earlier this year, I established the Joint Utilities and Transport Clearing House to provide a structured forum for resolving coordination issues that delay infrastructure projects. Government has also launched a new service through which the National Development Finance Agency will support departments at every stage of major capital projects.

In recent weeks, I updated the Infrastructure Guidelines, which set out the value for money guidelines for the evaluation, planning and management of public investment projects. These updates remove up to 20 weeks from the approval process for major projects, allowing them to progress more rapidly through the delivery lifecycle.

I have also established the Infrastructure Regulatory Simplification Unit within my department, which will work to examine opportunities for regulatory reform to speed up project delivery.

These actions demonstrate the appetite across government for tangible, impactful change. Work will continue to put in place further necessary reforms over the coming months, as we work to unpick the tangled regulatory web that has made delivery so difficult.

Ultimately we are increasing the risk appetite across our public services, supported by risk appetite statements, so we back decision makers across out public sectors to get projects approved, commenced and completed in the national interest.

There is real momentum across government and industry, and I am committed to driving this forward to deliver meaningful, lasting change. Prioritising the common good, through consistent leadership, clear decision-making, and a shared commitment to delivery, is essential to ensuring Ireland’s infrastructure keeps pace with demand.

Closing

Accelerating delivery is not about impatience but responsibility. Families, communities and businesses cannot afford the cost of inaction. By accelerating infrastructure delivery, we will unlock the homes that families need, the transport networks that connect communities, and the energy systems that power our economy and drive our decarbonisation.

There is now a systematic whole-of-government commitment to reform and to the timely delivery of the suite of actions set out in this plan. It demands urgency, collaboration, and accountability at every level and it will happen. The people of Ireland deserve no less, and this government will deliver.