In July 2025, my Department published the Report on Stakeholder Engagement and Emerging Themes on Infrastructure, which provided a comprehensive assessment of the factors contributing to delays in major infrastructure delivery. This work identified the most significant barriers to the timely provision of critical infrastructure and informed the development of a whole-of-Government response.
The assessment drew on extensive qualitative evidence. Officials in my Department undertook a detailed review of infrastructure development and delivery in Ireland and internationally, and, engaged directly with more than 50 key stakeholders across May and June 2025. This was complemented by a public consultation that received over 160 submissions, as well as engagement at the National Economic Dialogue and a regional consultation event in Athlone.
This approach enabled my Department to capture the firsthand experience of those responsible for developing, delivering, regulating and overseeing infrastructure projects. Based on this wide-ranging qualitative input, twelve inter-related barriers were identified across three broad areas:
Regulatory Environment: including complex, overlapping and sequential consent processes, increased administrative burden, risk aversion, and insufficient coordination across regulatory bodies.
Planning and Legal Systems: particularly the scale and impact of judicial reviews, which have grown substantially and contribute to uncertainty, extended timelines and increased costs.
Internal Systems: including fragmented governance, lengthy appraisal and approval processes, procurement challenges, uncertainty around project pipelines, and capacity constraints within the construction sector.
The findings make clear that delays arise from the cumulative effect of multiple processes across many public bodies. While statutory and legal processes play a significant role, administrative complexity, regulatory fragmentation, governance challenges and market capacity constraints were also consistently highlighted by stakeholders as major contributors to delay.
The focus of this work was on understanding the structural and procedural barriers experienced across the system. This qualitative analysis informed the development of Government’s response.
Following completion of this assessment, Government published the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan in December 2025. This sets out a comprehensive suite of 30 actions across four reform pillars to address the barriers identified. Implementation of the Action Plan is now underway, with the majority of actions scheduled for delivery in 2026.
