I propose to take Questions Nos. 305, 307, 308, 309 and 310 together.
My Department is responsible for the Infrastructure Guidelines, which replaced the Public Spending Code for capital appraisal since end 2023. These set the value for money requirements and guidance for evaluating, planning and managing Exchequer-funded capital projects. Management and delivery of investment projects and public services within allocation and the national frameworks, including the Infrastructure Guidelines, is a key responsibility of every Department, Accounting Officer and Minister.
The introduction of the Infrastructure Guidelines in 2023 focused on reducing the administrative burden in delivering major capital projects which came as part of the Government’s six priority action to maximise delivery of projects. This was implemented through reducing the number of approval stages and streamlining the requirements for major projects, while retaining the international best practice governance and oversight arrangements already in place, achieved through benchmarking of approaches to quality assurance of major public investment projects in other countries which are relevant in the Irish context including Norway, the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark. Best practice across all of these countries, which are reflected in the Infrastructure Guidelines, involves potential infrastructure projects passing through a number of approval/decision gates prior to final approval and implementation, with varying levels of appraisal and external review of the project taking place as the projects pass through these gates.
Adherence to the Infrastructure Guidelines themselves is ultimately the responsibility of the Accounting Officer of the relevant funding department. It is a matter for each Accounting Officer to decide whether processes in place in his/her department/ office/body and associated agencies are appropriate to ensure compliance with the Infrastructural Guidelines, manage capital budgets overall and manage budgets at an individual project level. As such, granular data in relation to individual projects in terms of cost escalation and project progression timelines/delays are a matter in the first instance for the relevant Accounting Officer and officials in the their department/office/body and are not collated centrally in my Department.
Within my Department's responsibility over the Infrastructure Guidelines, my Department manages the Major Projects Advisory Group (MPAG) review and previously the External Assurance Process (EAP) at Approval Gate 1 (AG1) to allow for greater scrutiny and clarity regarding major infrastructure projects and ensure value for money. As part of my Department's role in overseeing these processes, officials in the Infrastructure Delivery and Monitoring Unit (IDMU) undertook a desk based study of the timelines of progressing a project to AG1, conducted only on major projects which have been reviewed by MPAG as of mid-2025. As the MPAG review is solely a required step at AG1, the analysis by officials in my Department focused solely on this stage of the project lifecycle.
This study found that, for major projects, it takes approx. 63 weeks on average between a Preliminary Business Case being submitted to the funding Department and the project being submitted by the funding Department to Government to seek consent to approve at AG1. Though timelines can vary significantly from project to project, on average, projects took 20 weeks to move through the EAP stage and 6 weeks through the MPAG stage.
These findings have been published as part of the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan, available on gov.ie. The actions arising from this report, including any potential reforms to the Infrastructure Guidelines, some of which have recently been implemented via Circular 08/2026, will be included within the overall public financial management and control framework to be established as part of the current review of Public Financial Procedures (PFPs). As with previous updates to the appraisal framework, any changes made will reflect international best practice with the aim to ensure value for money for the tax payer in delivering on the infrastructural requirements of the State.
