Paul Hosford: The Government says it’s not them — it’s us. But is that really why nothing gets built?

Record NDP funding promises transformation, yet transport and housing projects continue to drift as political choices and systemic delays collide

An artist’s impression of Dublin’s Metrolink project. The sectoral plan for the Department of Transport was announced as news broke that 19 residents living near the proposed Metrolink terminus at Charlemont St had sought a judicial review of the project.

Back in July, when the Government announced the revised National Development Plan, I was somewhat disappointed.

You see, as a veteran of hundreds of government announcements in my time in journalism, I have become something of a fan of CGI images of things that would probably never be built. It helps one imagine what could have been or might be.

However, the current Government decided that the newer version of the plan would simply be a statement of the money which was available rather than individual projects, with individual departments set to prioritise their own projects and announce them in due course. In July, it was touted as the largest investment in infrastructure in the history of the State and includes over €200bn in infrastructure investment over the next decade.

It was announced that in the face of the housing crisis, the Department of Housing will receive the largest capital budget allocation, with just under €36bn allocated over the next five years. Of this, €28.3bn will fund housing development, while €7.6bn will support the construction of essential water infrastructure across the country.

Additionally, €2bn in equity funding will be provided to Uisce Éireann to help to deliver the ambitious target of 300,000 additional homes by 2030 and a further €2.5bn in equity funding will go to the utility for large-scale water projects between now and 2030.

As is the way of these announcements, though, much of the focus was on the Department of Transport, which will also receive substantial funding, with €22.3bn allocated over five years. When people think of capital investment, they most closely associate it with the likes of transport projects such as large roads and Metrolink.

So attention was focused on Wednesday’s announcement of the sectoral plan for the Department of Transport coming as news broke that 19 residents living near the proposed Metrolink terminus at Charlemont St in Dublin had sought a judicial review of the project, potentially delaying its construction.

Speaking as he launched his department’s plan, transport minister Darragh O’Brien said it would be a “stretch” to see the Metrolink begin construction in 2027 and that it was “hard to quantify” the possible impact of the judicial review on the construction timeline.

“This may delay it for a matter of months and it’s still open for people to reflect on the decision that they’ve taken to judicially review this project,” said Mr O’Brien.

The judicial review was cited by many in the Government as an example of why so many of those projects which had been launched in the glossy Project Ireland 2040 document and then re-launched as the National Development Plan 2021-2030 at an event in Páirc Uí Chaoimh have not been realised.

Tánaiste Simon Harris, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, and minister of state Seán Canney announcing details of the revised National Development Plan in July. File picture

The issue certainly isn’t funding — the new National Development Plan has been revised due to an influx of cash in recent years — and everyone in politics says it couldn’t possibly be political will, so it has to be the process. Judicial reviews, objections, Nimbyism, and public opposition are the reasons why the country’s large-scale public transport infrastructure still feels decades behind where it is. 

The Government’s message is clear: it’s not us, it’s you.

Public expenditure minister Jack Chambers, who chairs the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, will this week bring forward his proposals for speeding up the delivery of infrastructure. These proposals have been touted as “bulldozing bureaucracy”, “ending red tape”, “overhauling the system”, and “pushing the nuclear button” by various reports and briefings. At a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday, Mr Chambers said we are “hostages to process”, who have “gold-plated processes beyond EU requirements” and “we need to meet investment with reform”. He said that he intends to bring forward two pieces of legislation — the critical infrastructure bill and emergency powers to cut process timelines, as well as standardising judicial reviews.

However, the impact of judicial reviews is a matter of some contention. In a piece this week for The Irish Times, housing lecturer Lorcan Sirr cited figures from the Dublin Democratic Planning Alliance which show that just 0.22% of all planning applications result in a judicial review, of which the State loses 79% of the time.

While Conor O’Connell of the Construction Industry Federation said earlier this month that the rate of review in Ireland is more than five times that in the UK, Mr Sirr also points out that figures compiled by solicitor Fred Logue show that, in 2024, developers, landowners, and public authorities took 32% of all judicial reviews with the public taking 52%.

In a response to Mr Sirr, Pat Farrell of Irish Institutional Property said that the issue is not the mere existence of the review, it’s the “sheer unpredictability, the slow pace, and the fact that a single challenge can derail years of detailed planning work, often resulting in millions of euro in lost investment in badly needed new homes and critical infrastructure”.

In the case of Metrolink, the judicial review could delay it by months, but that assumes that anyone believed the project would have been on time in the first place and it is clear that there are issues with the speed of processing involved in major projects in Ireland, regardless of where you land on the cause. We simply do not deliver critical infrastructure quickly enough. 

Even the National Broadband Plan, which will come in on time and under budget by the looks of things, was a torture to get to the starting line and claimed the scalp of a Cabinet minister, Denis Naughten.

Which is why heads (including that of this writer) were turned by many in the west of Dublin when the sectoral plan was announced. Because the Dart+ South West plan, which would electrify around 20km of train lines from Celbridge to Heuston and into Drumcondra through the Phoenix Park tunnel, has been delayed.

Originally due to be operational by the end of the decade, this week’s document suggests it won’t begin construction until 2030 at the earliest. That is despite the plan having planning permission, facing no judicial reviews or objections, and running through the heart of two strategic development zones, Adamstown and Clonburris, which are due to deliver tens of thousands of new homes in the coming years.

Indeed, on the day after the plan was published, developer Evara trumpeted that it had received planning permission for 877 new homes in Adamstown, close to the train station, which will “benefit from the forthcoming Dart+ South West”. Maybe, but not for a while.

The current train line can carry 5,000 people a day, but has overcrowded rush hour services and no weekend trains, but thousands of homes have been planned to go alongside existing communities.

Asked why the plan has been delayed, Mr O’Brien said that he has “to manage the projects within the capital that I have, to be realistic” but said that both Dart+ South West and the Finglas extension of the Luas “might” begin next year, that timelines in the document are “indicative”, which begs the question why they exist at all if they are fungible.

But the whole document begs the question of why projects which can be delivered in a short enough timeframe are being delayed when nobody would argue that existing levels of infrastructure are adequate.

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If public objection and legal delay are such a big issue, why not then take the lower-hanging fruit? Between cost, climate, and development, it seems counterintuitive to prioritise our most complex projects, for which the Government needs new laws and regulations to even bring to the table, over things that should have been done years ago. 

But, look, at least we have a lot of nice CGI images.