Pinsent Masons
Summary
Businesses across Ireland’s construction sector should welcome the recently published ‘programme for government’ which sets out plans to refocus on delivering new infrastructure and projects at pace, experts have said.
Catherine Burns, construction specialist, and Garrett Monaghan, energy and infrastructure expert, of Pinsent Masons were commenting following the release of the document.
The draft, titled Securing Ireland’s Future (162 pages/1.1MB), was published on 15 January following talks between two political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which have now entered into a coalition agreement. It opens with a commitment on “delivering a strong and stable economy, the homes that people will need, providing high quality and accessible public services and the infrastructure required to sustain a growing society”. Throughout, the programme outlines a mix of political, social and economic policy statements that “if implemented into solid capex commitments, will lead to an increase in activity across the construction sector in Ireland”, said Burns.
As well as restating government support for existing projects such as the implementation of the National Development Plan for road and rail infrastructure projects and fast-tracking offshore wind development, the programme outlines diverse new policies across the infrastructure and energy sectors. This includes the building of 300,000 new homes by 2030, building integrated data centres and district heating systems, four new hospital projects and increasing the number of publicly available EV charging points across Ireland.
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