There is a way to unblock Ireland's infrastructural logjam
Listening to Sean O'Driscoll, chairman of the
Economic and Social Research Institute
(ESRI), and member of the Government's infrastructure taskforce, interviewed recently raised my hopes for a dawning realisation at Government level of the infrastructural crisis we face. Our administrative and legal procedures simply cannot overcome or unlock the logjam in time to prevent very serious damage to the Irish economy and Irish society.
O'Driscoll, a very experienced private sector chief executive, spoke plainly and truthfully about a number of issues including capital spending cutbacks. He observed that the Irish planning process had developed from a two-tier system involving local planning authorities and an appeal board process, to a three-tier one encompassing
a veritable legal industry grounded on judicial review
.
I would go much farther than O'Driscoll in predicting the crisis for economic infrastructure. The recently enacted Planning and Development Act redesignating
An Bord Pleanála
as An Comisiún Pleanala – the largest-by-volume enactment ever made by the Oireachtas – will compound rather than mitigate our disastrous planning process and Government's dismal record. The new commission is to be chaired by Paul Reid, formerly head of
Fingal County Council
and of the Health Service Executive. Frankly, it really doesn't matter who stands on the bridge of the new planning commission that increasingly resembles a governmental RMS Titanic.
The commission,
as I have written here
, is to be a single competent agency to decide on appeal matters as trivial as whether a bin shelter can be constructed in a front garden or the height of an extension to a family home. At the same time it could rule on decisions as far reaching as whether Metrolink should be built; whether offshore wind farms should be permitted in the Atlantic; all major State and local authority compulsory purchase orders; the number of flights to be allowed into Dublin Airport; whether a Shannon-Dublin water supply project or new Cork-Limerick motorway should be allowed to proceed.
READ MORE
What is it about Ireland that all of these massively different functions are vested in a single non-governmental agency? How is it hoped that such a vast range of powers and functions can be exercised by a single body entirely free from the curse of lengthy judicial review proceedings?
There is another way. Challenges to legislation enacted by the Oireachtas, as distinct from decisions made by non-governmental agencies including the planning commission, are far less likely to be brought or to succeed. The Victorian model of having the legislature authorise major infrastructural development by statute is the answer – subject to modification to take account of EU legal requirements.
When the fledgling Irish Free State determined to harness the Shannon's hydroelectric potential, it enacted, even before the establishment of the ESB, a law in 1925 providing for the construction at Ardnacrusha. This law also provided for the canals involved, the compulsory purchase of land and legal interests affected, and State financing of what was then a massive piece of national infrastructure.
[
Ardnacrusha at 100: What could happen if Ireland showed similar ambition today and invested 20% of national budget in energy?
Opens in new window
]
For 30 years, the construction of a Shannon-Dublin water supply scheme has been acknowledged as necessary at Government level. But nothing has happened.
Uisce Éireann
believes the project might take 10 more years for completion, even if it was given the Government's green light today.
Why not, instead, pass a 'Shannon-Dublin Water Supply Scheme Act'? It would have the following features: the promoter, Uisce Éireann, would submit detailed plans, including compulsory acquisition of wayleaves and other land. It would set out environmental impact assessments required by European law. Receipt and consideration of any third-party submissions would be completed by a select committee of the Oireachtas and the committee would authorise the works, as varied or approved, to be completed.
Subsequent challenge to the construction of the project would face the hurdle of proving the unconstitutionality of the measure. Judicial review would simply not arise.
The government of the day could kick-start and see through to completion major infrastructural projects if this model, like Victorian legislative infrastructural projects, were adopted.
The same could apply to the national power grid, major sewage disposal facilities and major rail projects. The legislative option incorporating such approval could even address passenger numbers at
Dublin Airport
.
Only a handful of Senators opposed central features of the Planning and Development Act, which has created monstrous new planning legal processes centred on the new planning commission, along with national development policies and guidelines, and the wholly unnecessary
Office of the Planning Regulator
.
Far from being an answer to the coming crisis identified by O'Driscoll, the 2024 Act is a charter for its continuation. It is a recipe for ongoing failure, even with its legally flimsy restriction on future judicial reviews. If the Government's infrastructural taskforce doesn't understand this, it too will fail.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Rathmines locals protest over An Post move to sell ‘cultural icon' later this year
Protesters gathered outside Rathmines post office on Saturday morning in a demonstration against its relocation and planned sale of the building. The protest came after An Post this week confirmed its plans to move the Rathmines branch by September, paving the way for the sale of one of the most prominent buildings in the south Dublin suburb. Labour leader and local TD Ivana Bacik organised Saturday's demonstration, alongside local councillors Fiona Connelly and Dermot Lacey. Speaking at the protest, she said the building should be kept 'in community usage', adding that 'our priority is to keep the postal service in the retail hall'. Labour leader Ivana Bacik at the protest in Rathmines on Saturday. Photograph: Ella Sloane The imposing 1934 art deco building will be sold with two other Dublin post offices – Phibsborough and Tallaght – as well as a further three across the State, as part of the 'transformation of the national post office network,' An Post said previously. READ MORE At present, 95 per cent of the country's post offices are already contracted out to independent business owners, who often run post office services as part of a local shop. It is understood the Rathmines post office will move to a Centra store in the locality. Ms Bacik described the demonstration as 'a last-ditch appeal' to Minister for Communications Patrick O'Donovan and Minister for Expenditure Jack Chambers to not sign off on the property's divestment. 'The post office is a very well loved, much-used building. This is very much from the heart.' Ms Connelly stressed the importance of public buildings such as the post office 'as a community asset and a community resource'. Cllr Fiona Connelly at the protest. Photograph: Ella Sloane 'It's really sad to see a resource like the post office, that's in such demand and so heavily used, closing.' Enid O'Dowd, a local and regular user of the postal service, said the decision to sell the building was 'just ridiculous', expressing concern at the pressure the branch's relocation would place on the post office in Ranelagh. Speaking of the branch's speculated move to a nearby Centra, she said the shop 'is going to be a very crushed place with queues spilling out on to the pavement'. 'What's going to happen is people are going to start using the one in Ranelagh but that isn't big enough for the demand. They've only two cashiers there.' Enid O'Dowd at the protest. Photograph: Ella Sloane Cliona Buckley, who grew up on Leinster Road said: 'The last thing they [An Post] should be doing is shutting down memorable, protected, built for purpose buildings. What they should be doing is spending money cleaning up the front of it or they could have lovely potted plants or flower baskets and make it a feature.' She said the post office's planned closure and sale showed a failure by An Post 'to serve the Irish citizens'. Andrew Folan, Mary Freehill and Cliona Buckley at the protest. Photograph: Ella Sloane Another local demonstrator, Andrew Folan, said he felt 'absolutely outraged' by An Post's decision, adding that it was indicative of 'the digitalisation of our culture'. 'The analogue thing of writing letters, posting letters, distributing parcels and meeting the community while you do it is an essential part of our life. I think that the gradual shutting down of post offices is a very negative thing.' Mr Folan pointed to the need for 'a spacious building' due to demand for the service. 'This is a fantastic cultural icon, beautiful design and art deco, well built and a landmark for Rathmines. I think we should celebrate what we've got and show a bit more regard for our culture and our heritage,' he said. Former Labour councillor Mary Freehill, from Rathmines, said the recent loss of the suburb's citizen's information centre in 2022 had already taken a toll on the community. 'There isn't a place for people to come together.' 'Rathmines has very few publicly owned buildings,' said Ms Freehill, adding 'this is the only thing built by the Irish State in Rathmines. All of our other public buildings were built by the British.'
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
Palestine GAA club's planned tour of Ireland ‘under serious threat' due to visa delays
A West Bank GAA club's planned trip to Ireland 'is now under serious threat due to visa delays', representatives have said. At least 33 young Palestinian players are to arrive in Ireland in July to play a series of competitive matches against GAA clubs around the country and to take part in a cultural exchange. GAA Palestine, the organisation behind the tour, said it faced 'new requirements introduced during the [application] process', such as English-language birth certificates for Palestinian players and for coaches born in the West Bank. It further said the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv had closed its public office since Iranian missiles hit the Israeli capital and it was 'not prioritising visa applications ... halting all progress'. READ MORE A total of 46 people, including players, coaches, officials and one doctor, were due to arrive in Dublin on July 18th as part of planned trip by Ramallah-based Moataz Sarsour GAA club. GAA Palestine chairman Stephen Redmond said the new requirements in the visa application process had increased the expected processing time from four weeks to eight after, he said, it was given a 10 week pre-departure time frame to submit all necessary paperwork. It had officially submitted the visa applications on May 19th. Co-founder of GAA Palestine Claire Liddy said 'the embassy responded three weeks later, on Monday, June 9th, with a list of additional required documents'. She said the Irish Representative Office in Ramallah 'refused to accept the original documents' on June 13th. She said as local team members were Palestinian, they were 'banned from travelling to Tel Aviv', so club officials outside the region 'had to scan and send the original documents digitally on Monday, June 16th'. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: 'The department cannot comment on individual visa applications, but all visa applications are processed in line with established procedures for consideration by the Department of Justice.' The spokesperson said the Irish embassy's public office in Tel Aviv and representative office in Ramallah 'are presently closed due to the security situation and staff are working remotely. The public offices will reopen when circumstances permit'. Mr Redmond criticised what he labelled 'bureaucratic nonsense' and he called 'for common sense to prevail so these young people can step on to a GAA pitch'. He said the group had requested an expedited processing of their application, but that this had not taken place. 'With co-operation from the Department of Foreign Affairs, there is still a chance to issue these visas in time,' he said.
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
Ireland needs to ditch empty promises and economic fairy tales and start confronting reality
The next six weeks or so are going to go a long way to defining the Government's term in office. The printers are going to be busy. We are due an updated housing plan, a new strategy on competitiveness and productivity, the Summer Economic Statement and a new medium-term budget strategy along with a revised National Development Plan outlining state investment plans. Then, in the middle of all this, there is the deadline for the US/EU tariff talks on July 9th. The Government needs to use this crucial period to set some kind of coherent economic narrative for its term. So far it has been firing blanks. For example, bits of its housing plan are drip-feeding out in an often-disorganised fashion. Perhaps this is meant to give the impression of busyness, but all it does is confuse people. READ MORE At the heart of all this is credibility. A believable strategy must have some hope of delivery. And here the State – in the widest sense of the Government and the public service – is struggling. It is not just that things are happening late – like the National Children's Hospital. Or that there are signs of waste and carelessness with public money – step forward the Leinster House bike shed. It is that a lot of vital stuff is simply not happening at all. It is a stretch to believe that the Metro will ever get built. Or the giant project to bring water from Shannon across the State. Or the offshore wind infrastructure that is meant to be at the heart of our energy transition , where the Draghi report on EU competitiveness showed Ireland has one of the most long-drawn out consent mechanisms in Europe. In this context, government targets take on an air of fantasy. Less than six months into the Coalition's term, Minister for Housing James Browne told us this week that the target of building 41,000 homes this year is not going to happen. So why should we believe the target for 2026 or the 300,000 plus homes promised during the Coalition's term? The Departments of Finance and of Public Expenditure will publish a budget strategy over the summer, based, we must assume, on tighter control of day-to-day spending. But key spending targets have ended up being roundly ignored in recent years. Central Bank researchers estimated this week that permanent Government spending has risen by 37 per cent since 2021. Had the annual spending limits of 5 per cent set by the previous administration been adhered to, the increase would have been 16 per cent. That is a €16 billion difference. Official documents and targets seem to exist in some kind of parallel universe where no one really expects them to happen. They are more fairy stories than strategy. And the risk with the plans coming in the weeks ahead is that these are more endless checklists of stuff that is happening already and stuff that might or might not happen at all. Some central themes and directions are urgently needed. And some convincing messages of actual action to get things done. Investment is built on certainty, yet in key areas such as climate change and housing this is simply missing. The current drift has a cost. The stalling of investment across the economy is in part due to threats of tariffs from Donald Trump . There isn't much the Government can do about that. But it can start to get its own story straight. Lack of clarity about housing policy is causing parts of the construction industry to sit on its hands. With talk of more incentives and tax breaks on the way, and uncertainty on state commitment in areas of social housing, builders wait to see what emerges. House building volumes slipped by 4.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the previous three months. Meanwhile, big foreign investors – and their international headquarters – are starting to realise that promises to deliver better energy and water infrastructure are simply not being met. Investment plans, on hold to see how the US/EU talks work out, will restart at some stage. Ireland is at risk of not being in the frame. The first real alarm bell for this was when Intel ditched Oranmore in Co Galway as a possible site for a big new plant in 2021 because the State could not guarantee how long planning would take on vital supporting infrastructure. This followed the seemingly endless planning saga for the Apple data centre in Athenry , also Co Galway. A convincing economic narrative needs a few central points that everyone has signed up to. Read the Central Bank research out this week for a convincing case on how state investment remains low here, despite tripling over the past decade. This is because the economy and population have grown so fast and the economy was already hobbled by years of underinvestment after the financial crash. To allow space for investment to continue to grow – and provide a buffer if the public finances tighten – other parts of the budget need to be under control. This means keeping the budget in surplus and continuing to put away excess corporate taxes in the funds for the future. This needs to be a central part of a coherent strategy. To be credible, the whole Government – including Micheál Martin and Simon Harris – need to explicitly sign up to this. If it is just a creature of the budget departments, then it will be there to be negotiated away during the budget process. It goes without saying that the second leg of any strategy needs to focus on prioritisation and delivery. Many thousands of words have been written about this. And the challenges are significant. But Ireland, for now anyway, is in a uniquely privileged position with a flush Exchequer and room for manoeuvre. The resources are there. Spending them well is the challenge. Ireland can consider how to respond as the Trump story plays out. The odds are that it will continue to do so long after the July 9th talks deadline. But the Government needs a convincing narrative of how it is going to manage what is under its control and use what may prove to be transitory budgetary riches. There are dangers ahead. But we are starting from a good position, with full employment and flush coffers that are the envy of many other countries. The Government needs to start telling a better story – not just to the public and investors, but also to itself.
