The Public Expenditure Minister has insisted safeguards are in place to ensure value for money on the new National Development Plan.
Michael McGrath says external experts will be brought in at tender stage in a bid to avoid a repeat of the National Children's Hospital overruns.
It's a plan of huge scale - €165 billion euro in capital funding over the next decade.
“We don’t hear half enough about those projects that actually have been completed.”
Here, @LeoVaradkar lists the projects that have been completed since #ProjectIreland2040 was launched three years ago. pic.twitter.com/ZNVaMdlF28— Fine Gael (@FineGael) October 4, 2021
All the road projects from the previous NDP have made it into this plan.
Along with big public transport moves like BusConnects in all five cities, Dart+, the western rail corridor and Metrolink.
But most don't have timelines.
"Bizarre"
The decision to give no firm date for the completion of the Dublin Metrolink has been branded as "bizarre".
Public expenditure minister Michael McGrath said earlier today the long-delayed project will finally enter planning next year.
But while the metro was meant to open in 2027, it has since been delayed and no completion date was included in the National Development Plan.
Labour finance spokesman Ged Nash says the project must be accelerated.
Disappointing
Business group Dublin Town says it's disappointed, saying the plan fails to sufficiently recognise the infrastructural bottle necks in Dublin city and the pre-eminent position of Dublin as the country’s only city of scale. At a time of rapid change in the international environment, we must increasingly look to ‘quality of life’ issues to sustain and develop inward investment. Dublin has traditionally offered that quality of life and must be supported in doing so into the future. This entails the maintaining of a vibrant and vital Dublin city centre.
DublinTown says: "The proposals announced today contain an over emphasis on road building at the expense of vital public transport infrastructure. It is difficult to see how we can meet our climate change challenges without such immediate investment. The public support investment in sustainable transport. This support will accelerate as the 2020’s progress and Gen Z comes to adulthood. It is difficult to see how the plan announced today will not be seen as a missed opportunity in the coming years.
"This plan lacks sufficient ambition and that the timelines for delivery had to be consolidated. It is now obvious that even these unambitious targets will not be met. This is very difficult to fathom as a time when urgent action is required.
"The original timelines for Metro Link together with DART and Luas expansions must be reinstated. DublinTown also believes that the DART Underground project is more urgent than ever and must be included in costed plans.
"We will not be forgiven where we fail to do the right thing. Urgent action is required. The public will not be forgiving when Ireland faces fines for missing carbon emission targets and where we continue to promote traffic bottle necks rather than free flowing sustainable transport."
