Fine Gael will give a commitment to establishing a new Government Department of Infrastructure in its manifesto for the next election, the Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has said.
He said such a proposal – which was put forward some weeks ago by Taoiseach Simon Harris – represented “the kind of change that can make a big difference”.
Mr Donohoe said Mr Harris had identified “a really big challenge that we are going to face in a few year’s time”.
“That challenge is that we are going to have a large number of really big infrastructure projects all coming through the planning process, all inside the same term of the Government.”
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“And the Government will want to try to make all of them happen or most of them happen.”
Mr Donohoe said the point the Taoiseach had made about changing Government structures to make that happen was “a really good proposal”.
“I will certainly be working with him in the next few months to further flesh that out [the establishment of a new Department for Infrastructure] and explain how it would work.”
Mr Donohoe said the challenge with the proposal would be defining what represented really important infrastructure and what did not.
The Minister pointed to the proposed Dublin Metrolink system which he described as a “huge project”.
He said the system – which is scheduled to run from Swords in north county Dublin to Charlemont on the south side of the city and could cost between €9 billion and €12 billion – was one which the Department of Transport was aiming to deliver.
“But if you were to move a project like that now away from the Department of Transport, or away from the National Transport Authority, it could make it even far harder to do.”
However, Mr Donohoe said he supported the plan to establish a separate Department of Infrastructure “and we’ll look at how that would work now in the coming weeks and months”.
Speaking at the annual MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal last month, Mr Harris said his aim was to centralise the management of infrastructure projects into one dedicated department.
“I want our State to improve on its delivery of small, medium, and large-scale projects. You know all about the large capital projects that go over budget and over time. You probably don’t hear about all the projects that get done on time and under budget, and we have lots of those,” Mr Harris said.
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