Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 18 November 2025
652. Deputy Ken O'Flynn asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the estimated labour hours lost due to planning delays, procurement delays, and infrastructure bottlenecks in the past two years; and the reforms planned to minimise workforce downtime. [63926/25]
View answerOn 15 October 2024, my Department published a Ministerial Action Plan on Planning Resources to respond to capacity challenges in the planning sector. This Action Plan provides a detailed roadmap to increase the pool of planning and related expertise needed to ensure a planning system fit for future needs. It sets out 14 high-level actions that provide a coordinated pathway to ensure a sustainable pipeline of planning and related expertise into the future, addressing the areas of education, recruitment and retention, as well as measures to encourage greater innovation and efficiency.
Funding was secured in Budget 2025 to support delivery of the Action Plan on Planning Resources and a Steering Group established to coordinate and oversee the development of this Action Plan will remain in place to oversee the implementation and ongoing review of the Action Plan.
In terms of infrastructure bottlenecks, I have established a Housing Activation Office in my Department. The team comprises senior and experienced staff from within my Department, in addition to senior specialists seconded from Uisce Éireann, ESB Networks, the National Transport Authority, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and the local government sector. This team is actively engaged in identifying barriers to housing delivery and is coordinating with local authorities and infrastructure agencies to address these barriers.
Government recently published the Action Plan on Competitiveness and Productivity coordinated by Department of Enterprise Tourism and Employment. This Action Plan is closely aligned with the objectives of the National Development Plan (NDP, July 2025), particularly its focus on enhancing national economic resilience, investing in infrastructure that supports enterprise growth, and enabling innovation-led, sustainable development.
This Action Plan identifies that the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform – through an ‘Accelerating Infrastructure’ Taskforce undertook a review of how critical economic infrastructure is delivered in Ireland. The review identifies barriers to the efficient delivery of critical economic infrastructure. Overall, the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce has identified 12 barriers to infrastructure delivery (31 July 2025) in the areas of regulatory environment, the planning and legal system and internal systems. Actions to address these barriers will follow later this year.
Procurement processes also fall within the policy remit of Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation.
