Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe has announced a series of measures aimed at speeding-up the delivery of the €165 billion National Development Plan (NDP).
The NDP was launched in October 2021 and aims to fund a range of infrastructural projects over a 10-year-period – such as housing, schools, hospitals, roads and public transport.
Minister Donohoe has secured Government approval for the package of sanctions aimed at enhancing project delivery for the NDP.
The actions include significant changes to reduce the administrative burden in delivering major capital projects.
Under the reforms, the Public Spending Code, which sets out the approvals process for new projects, will be removed and replaced by a set of Infrastructure Guidelines. The will reduce the number of approval stages prior to implementation of projects from five to three.
The level of cost at which a new proposal is considered a major project is also raised from €100m to €200m. It will allow for projects below this limit to proceed more speedily through the appraisal and evaluation process compared to those of greater scale and complexity.
Major projects are required to undergo a more rigorous assessment process than this and will receive more Government oversight prior to implementation. Major projects are required to go through the External Assurance Process and Major Projects Advisory Group Process at the Preliminary Business Case stage.
Major projects will also need Government consent at both the Preliminary Business Case stage and Final Business Case stage.
It will allow those departments that are responsible, greater freedom to pursue the delivery of their priority projects.
Further changes include additional reforms to the Capital Works Management Framework, which sets out the contracts used for public capital projects. These will be in addition to previous reforms, such as the introduction of liability caps, announced by the minister last week.
Minister Donohoe will take a direct role in overseeing delivery of the NDP by chairing the Project Ireland 2040 Delivery Board, which will meet on a quarterly basis. Capacity reviews of departments and agencies with significant delivery programmes will be carried out, where appropriate, to ensure that adequate resources for project delivery are in place.
Direct reporting to Government on NDP delivery on a quarterly basis throughout 2023 and 2024 will now also take place.
An independent evaluation of NDP priorities and capacity will be conducted over the coming months.
New projects
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Minister Donohoe said changes to the public spending code in the NDP will only impact new projects.
“I believe it is delivering what it needs to do from an evaluation perspective,” he said.
“But I do believe we need to do that work quicker.”
He said that this was due to the impact of inflation, such as the price of raw materials.
“The longer it takes to evaluate projects the more expensive they become to deliver,” he added.
“I want to ensure that within any given year, we spend all of our capital programme within the year.”
Mr Donohoe said today’s change to the public spending code had been influenced by learnings from the National Children’s Hospital, where the current cost is €1.4bn and expected to go up.
School buildings
Minister Donohue has said both he and the Minister for Education are working to resolve “very shortly” a situation which has seen 58 major school building projects put on ice due to funding pressures.
He said the pausing of the projects was a result of the rise in construction and raw material prices.
He said he was “aiming to try to come up with an overall funding response” for the schools involved and he said that he appreciated the frustration the delay was causing in school communities.
The Department of Education said again today that it was its own strong level of delivery that was “a key driver” of the capital pressures now being encountered.
In a statement it reiterated that in addition to the normal pressures on the school building budget, there were extra pressures caused by a requirement to accelerate delivery of accommodation for children with special educational needs and to accommodate additional students from Ukraine and elsewhere, particularly at post-primary level where accommodation pressures are more acute.
It said it would be providing an update to individual schools when its engagement with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform concludes.
The 58 building projects in locations around the country were due to proceed to tender and construction stage but the schools involved were informed several weeks ago that the plans had been put on hold.
Additional reporting Emma O’Kelly
Donohoe announces measures to speed up €165bn NDP
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