Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD outlines progress on National Development Plan (NDP) delivery to date, ongoing reforms in planning, developments in MMC, and further innovation in 2024. The National Development Plan 2021-2030 sets out a positive vision for Ireland, which delivers total public investment of €165 billion over its lifetime. This expenditure will be pivotal in delivering the vital infrastructure we need to support our future economic requirements, climate change commitments and address our social investment needs. T ..read more

Can we enable transitions in a meaningful way to deliver our key infrastructure needs? Paul O’Neill, Managing Director, Corporate Finance, KPMG, writes. When I wrote this article for last year’s publication, our key global themes centred round digital transformation, supply chain disruption and energy transition. All very much remain at the core of what we see looking ahead to 2024, but can it finally translate to accelerated project delivery? Digital transformation – moving from talk to action Every year, it feels like we predict that the infrastructure sector will finally embrace digital, in ..read more

Total capital expenditure in Budget 2024 amounts to €12.8 billion, a 7.6 per cent increase on Mid-Year Expenditure Report 2023 levels and a 3.2 per cent increase on Budget 2023 levels as Ireland continues infrastructure spending increases to deliver the National Development Plan. Ireland’s total capital expenditure of €12.8 billion in Budget 2024 is made up of €12.6 billion in gross voted core capital expenditure as is set out by the National Development Plan (NDP) and €250 million from windfall exchequer receipts “to be allocated to critical infrastructure projects that are at an advanced sta ..read more

Ireland has seen a year-on-year increase in road fatalities over the last number of years, which has become a hot topic. The recent hike in numbers is not limited to Ireland, many other European countries have witnessed the same regression following Covid-19, writes Suzanne Meade, Senior Engineer, TII Road Safety. It is beneficial to briefly benchmark our road safety performance against the rest of Europe. The European average, in 2021, was 44 collisions per million population; Ireland has a lower rate of 27 collisions per million population, placing it in the top five best performing countrie ..read more

Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Senior Research Officer Muireann Lynch discusses the cost of planning and regulatory delays for the energy system. Contextualising her research, Lynch explains that the idea for the ESRI’s paper investigating the cost of planning and regulatory delays for the energy system was stakeholders querying losses incurred in the time it takes to get energy projects connected to the grid and generating power. Lynch and her colleagues analysed electric renewable energy (RES-E) projects due to such projects being a “major pillar of energy policy, both in term ..read more

Ireland has the necessary tools to take full advantage of the benefits of modern methods of construction (MMC). Jenna Davis, Associate Director with KPMG’s infrastructure team, discusses the barriers and opportunities of MMC. The construction industry in Ireland has two challenges right now; increasing productivity and building sustainable infrastructure. Quicker adoption of MMC in Ireland can produce three clear outputs to address these challenges: speed up construction time and volume; reduce the environmental impact with sustainable construction practices; and a mitigation against inflatio ..read more

How best to protect against latent defects in construction projects has long been a thorny problem. While developers may have direct contractual claims against contractors and design professionals and may extend those claims by collateral warranties to purchasers, funders, and tenants, as the market has become increasingly sophisticated a greater awareness exists as to the potential shortcomings in relying solely on contractual claims. This has resulted in increased market demand for additional protections against latent defects. Latent defects: What are they? The term “latent”, sometimes call ..read more

The 2022 update on the implementation of the Project 2040 infrastructure programme paints a largely positive picture for the strategy’s progression, but with economic challenges having manifested in 2022, significant work remains to be done. The Project Ireland 2040 Annual Reports for 2022 outlines that the volume of output in building and construction in 2022 was 9.7 per cent lower that the production level found in 2019, pre-pandemic. In terms of construction (excluding civil engineering), the volume of output in 2022 was 9.9 per cent lower relative to 2019. With regards to the residential s ..read more

The Housing Agency procurement unit aims to provide technical and professional services and support to local authorities and approved housing bodies (AHBs) in the delivery of homes within sustainable communities, writes Norman Jackson, Senior Procurement and Projects Advisor in The Housing Agency. The procurement unit was enhanced and expanded in response to the Government’s Housing for All Action Plan as published in 2021. Having worked as Senior Procurement and Projects Advisor with responsibility for the unit since its formation, I have seen the significant impact the team has made through ..read more

The average cost of delivering a three-bedroom semi-detached house in a multi-unit scheme ranges from €354,000 to €461,000 dependent upon location. The majority of this cost is made up of hard costs such as construction materials, which cumulatively increased by 0.3 per cent in 2023. Research collating the covering seven regions by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI), published in December 2023, found that the cost of delivering a three-bedroom semi-detached house in a multi-unit scheme ranges from €354,000 in the northwest region (counties Mayo, Roscommon, and Leitrim) to €461,4 ..read more