Sean O’Driscoll: 'Ireland needs radical action to end its infrastructure crisis' 

ESRI chairman and UCC Governing Authority chairman Sean O'Driscoll. File picture: John Allen

The Government must accept that there is a “national crisis in Irish infrastructure”, according to a member of a taskforce charged with improving Ireland’s project delivery.

ESRI chairman Sean O’Driscoll warned of “catastrophic consequences” facing Ireland’s water, energy, and transport networks if “radical and brave decisions are not taken to ensure projects get completed quicker”.

He claimed public servants are more “scared” of the public accounts committee than of the economy declining. He said: 

That has resulted in paralysis and risk aversion in the system. The bold decisions that are required aren’t being taken, they’re being avoided and they have been for 10 years. 

Mr O’Driscoll was one of 12 people appointed in May to an “accelerating infrastructure” taskforce, chaired by public expenditure minister Jack Chambers.

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In an interview with the Irish Examiner, he calls for “urgent, impactful, radical and immediate actions” including:

• Addressing judicial reviews and planning delays. He said the bar for judicial reviews is “far too low” and the Government must go further than its newly-published Planning Act to tackle crises in energy and water;
• Extend Part 8 planning permissions enjoyed by local councils, which allows them to develop on land independently of An Bord Pleanála to ensure critical infrastructure projects get built;
  
• Tell the EU that Ireland has an “infrastructure emergency” to overcome regulation red tape;
• Secure multi-year funding for utilities and major projects and urge co-operation between local authorities and utility providers.

The infrastructure taskforce was launched in May and is in the middle of a public consultation. It is expected to issue up to 50 recommendations to the Government within months to help speed up delivery.

Uisce Éireann chief executive Niall Gleeson warned last month that Dublin is facing serious water supply and wastewater capacity challenges. The stark warning, coupled with fears of power outages in recent years, are evidence of the potentially “catastrophic” effect of failing to get Ireland’s infrastructure improved, Mr O’Driscoll warned.

He pointed to a gas pipeline connecting Cork and Dublin being built more than 40 years ago, compared with the time taken to get a planned 170km pipeline to bring water from the River Shannon to Dublin approved, as an example of the need to overhaul decision-making in the sector.

Dublin will have a water crisis within five years for the houses it has planned. Are we saying we can’t build a water system for the capital city of the country today? We need radical thinking.

“Why wouldn’t you [extend Part 8 planning laws] for large infrastructure projects of national significance? Extend that to private land. If the Shannon water project isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.”

'Infrastructure paralysis'

He said public expenditure minister Jack Chambers recently said infrastructure delivery is in “paralysis”.

“In medical terms, that means an emergency.

"The art of politics is compromise. Politicians like to avoid taking tough decisions. But if we’re going to crack infrastructure, hard decisions are going to have to be taken, and this will have to be treated as a national emergency. We admit it is one and then we treat it as such.”

On whether the EU could frustrate Irish attempts to overhaul planning, the former Glen Dimplex chairman pointed to Germany’s attempts to substitute LNG imports and other infrastructure to reduce its dependence on Russian-imported gas as an example of EU hurdles being overcome in emergency times. He said: 

There is no point hiding behind Europe. I hear people saying ‘there’s an EU directive’ and ‘we can’t do this’... I don’t buy that anymore. 

"We all have an onus to say not all regulation is good and we need to say ‘we have an emergency’ to Brussels.”

Asked about Ireland’s climate change targets, he insisted that development should be compatible with those targets, pointing to vast improvements required in the building of renewable energy projects.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin should become centrally involved in the task force’s work, Mr O’Driscoll added, as former Taoiseach Enda Kenny had in the successful 2012 action plan for jobs, after the financial crash.

He said the warning signs are there, and that the utilitiies are all talking about it: 

“The government of the day don’t want to hear public bodies saying this, but they need to hear it. When the lights go out, or the water isn’t available, they’ll say: ‘Why didn’t anyone shout about this?’”