‘Decade of delivery’ needed on infrastructure
A conference on property investment and infrastructure has heard that Ireland needs “a decade of delivery” to close the infrastructure gap with peer countries.
The comment came from Goodbody’s chief economist Dermot O’Leary at Byrne Wallace Shields LLP’s annual convention on property investment and infrastructure.
Opening the event (25 September), Jack Chambers (Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation) said that the spending outlined by the National Development Plan (NDP) needed to be matched by reform of how projects were delivered.
O’Leary welcomed the NDP’s five-year spending plan but also pointed to the need to find solutions to blockages such as planning, land availability, costs issues, and finance.
Planning delays
A panel discussion on property investment heard that there was a need to find “a healthy balance” between public and private funding.
A session on utilities and energy discussed planning and judicial reviews, which panellists most frequently cited as leading to delays.
A discussion on delivering infrastructure projects identified capacity issues, lack of multi-year funding, and planning and judicial reviews as key issues.
The proposed solutions debated included special-purpose legislation for large projects.
Risk aversion
Byrne Wallace Shields property partner Michael Walsh said that a key theme from each panel discussion was the need to rebalance interests, so that housing and infrastructure projects could be delivered for the common good.
“Within the backdrop of the scars of the global economic recession, risk aversion in the built-environment ecosystem has led to an element of paralysis, often to the detriment of progress and the furtherance of the national interest,” he stated.
Walsh added that policy stabilisation also emerged as a common theme, citing the example of (RPZs).
“The buyer market may not respond to announcements heralding reform until those reforms have been enacted by the legislature,” he added.