Chapter 1: What are the 30 points in the Government’s infrastructure action plan?
So we know the 30 points in the government's infrastructure action plan. We know that the government needs to introduce two urgent pieces of legislation to speed up delivery and cut down on regulatory and legal delays. We know senior civil servants will be publicly on the hook if they appear to stymie critical proposals.
And we know that the common good is set to be elevated above the individual concern for the first time ever. But will it work? Imelda Mannion used to work for Jacobs Engineering and advised numerous governments on infrastructure planning. But crucially, she sat on the Accelerating Infrastructure Task Force, whose work was published yesterday. Good morning, Imelda.
Good morning, Joe. Thanks for having me on.
Great to have you on. You must be quite relieved to get the report out there after all the work that you did over the last few months.
Chapter 2: What urgent legislation is needed to speed up infrastructure delivery?
It was a great achievement and a really positive launch yesterday.
And were you surprised that the government accepted nearly everything that you suggested and there wasn't as much dilution as many of these reports and action plans face?
I think it reflected two things, Jo. Firstly, everyone now sees how serious the problem is. We all know how long delivery timelines are now, that they've doubled over the past 20 years. It's affecting housing so seriously. It's affecting our energy security. It's affecting our competitiveness. But secondly, I think the actions in this plan are very grounded.
They very specifically address the barriers that came through when we ran the public and the stakeholder consultation earlier this year. And those actions have come directly from people who actually deliver infrastructure, you know, the utility bodies themselves, the regulators, local authorities and the private sector.
And I think when the work is that practical, there tends to be a lot of alignment. So I think that's part of the reason that this plan has had such a kind of accelerated path through the approval process.
We've spoken a lot about the changing in judicial reviews, but apart from that, what do you think is the single most important of the 30 points?
I'll actually maybe talk about the structure and the approach as much as what's as important in the points themselves. You know, outside of the judicial review and the other kind of key legislative change that's proposed, there are many other actions that will look to make the system work differently day to day. And I think that's really important. for us to have a chance at success.
You know, the judicial reviews matter and they are getting much of the headline coverage, but they're not the whole story. The bigger delays have come from a system that has been working too sequentially and that's quite fragmented.
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Chapter 3: How did the Accelerating Infrastructure Task Force influence the government's decisions?
So instead of working in parallel, civil servants wait for a different bit of the government to agree on something?
They do. You know, we have one approval that's required, that's then followed by the next, even where there's similarities across those regulators' requirements or across the approvals themselves. And I think it's really important to know as well that You know, where judicial reviews are a big threat or legal challenges is a big threat, you have a system where behaviours change.
Behaviours become really defensive and really cautious and risk averse. And when you have regulators operating in an environment of fear, they tend to take more time to process those approvals and be very focused on the procedural issues kind of checkpoints within those approvals rather than the outcomes itself.
I was going to say, I think one of the key components in this actual plan is that you guys in the private sector will stay on and have a monitoring and advisory role to ensure that the civil servants don't drag their heels when it comes to delivery.
We will. And that comes back to the structure and the approach. You know, the actions themselves are all very tangible and built into the heart of them. There's key transparency around who's accountable for their delivery. Every action is time bound. The ownership sits at the highest levels in departments with the ministers and the secretary generals.
And that's a really big shift in government approach. But this oversight framework that we're implementing will be as important. So one part of that is that the task force will continue and we will meet monthly to oversee and challenge the progress itself.
But critically, there will also be a central coordination unit established within the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform that will be housed within the infrastructure division. And that will track delivery, identify delays early and escalate them quickly on a day-to-day basis. And that type of structure and accountability, I think, hasn't existed before.
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Chapter 4: What are the biggest challenges affecting infrastructure delivery timelines?
So it does give this plan a much stronger chance of actually being delivered.
You will also have one eye on future EU rules and regulations to ensure that they are not gold-plated in Irish legislation, which has been a problem when it comes to infrastructure delivery.
It has. You know, looking across those EU regulations, we're still bound by all of those. And what we are trying to do, essentially, which is similar to the EU simplification process itself, is challenge how appropriately they are applied in an Irish context. Why are we doing some of the things we are doing?
Looking at how we've interpreted some of the EU regulations, which are unnecessary or disproportionate.
Exactly. Like when it comes to environmental impact statements, the EU rules say if you're building a road, for example, it needs to be at least 10 kilometres. But in this country, we've made it 500 metres.
And I'll give you another example, Joe, that came up through the process itself and the task force. You know, around the year 2000, the EIA directive came in where a water company, if they were building a plant servicing up to 150,000 population equivalent, didn't need an EIA. or they could serve up to 150,000 population equivalent before they needed an EIA.
In Ireland, for some reason that nobody can actually confirm, about 25 years ago, we changed that threshold to 10,000 population equivalent.
Adding immensely to the cost.
Immensely. So there's gold plating across our whole system and there's also a necessary duplication of process. And what we're trying to do is look at where we can do that better, where we can do things in a much simpler, smarter way to make the system quicker, to remove that duplication and just to be more joined up.
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