The trains and buses are packed. The traffic is gridlocked. The “return to the office”, with employers enforcing policies more tightly, seems to have increased the pressure on Ireland’s creaking transport system. It is part of a wider story, of course.
Years of underinvestment and the recent surge in the population mean Ireland has run into the buffers all over the place – housing, water, energy, schools and hospitals – with significant social and economic costs.
As you stand with your nose pressed against the Dart window during the week with someone’s rucksack hitting you or watch a full bus go past, you will – no doubt – welcome the Government’s promise that it is taking action to speed up infrastructure delivery.
The enthusiasm of some for this new approach will be reduced a bit by news last week that, while some public transport projects are to go ahead, the extensions for the electrified Dart network to Dublin’s southwest and the Luas Green line to Finglas are to be delayed. Everything, it seems, can’t be done at once. And the time gap before delivery is a real political issue.
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But a State that hasn’t delivered a major piece of rail infrastructure since the completion of the Luas cross-city in 2017 really needs to get on with it. Since then, the number of people at work has increased by over a quarter, a rise of 600,000 plus. That is a lot more commuters.
That is what the announcement expected next Wednesday is about. There will be much talk of reducing blockages and ensuring that the common good can take precedence. That this comes as residents of Dartmouth Square south of Dublin city centre take a judicial review against the planning decision to approve the MetroLink project will play to the Government’s political advantage.
But even before it is published, the debate on the Government’s plan to accelerate the provision of infrastructure is already raging. It will be unfortunate if it turns into some kind of culture war about environmental goals and people’s rights to object.
Because as with most things, speeding up the delivery of key projects and building houses more quickly does not come down to just one or two things. It has been a systemic failure.
The delivery of the MetroLink, for example, may now be threatened by the judicial review – a legal process the Coalition has rightly targeted for reform. But a project first planned in the early 2000s has been delayed for many other reasons, including the State running out of money, extraordinary political indecision, jockeying among State bodies, the cost of construction in Ireland and an elongated planning system, to name just a few.
Credibility in the reform plan requires self-awareness from our political leaders. Some of the faux-surprised statements from Ministers in recent months about how everything takes so long in Ireland ignore the fact that most of them have held senior office for close to a decade and have done little or nothing about it.
Examine the evidence.
There was the complete failure to reform the sclerotic administrative processes under their own noses in Government departments and agencies; the long time it took to address the problems in An Bord Pleanála; the botched planning reforms announced in 2016; and the failure to resource planning and the courts properly.
All criticisms were batted off on the basis that a new planning reform plan, passed into law in its final days, would deal with it all. Now we are told that it won’t.
There is no point in decrying nimbyism when the current rules and incentives allow it to prosper
The latest proposals – based on what we know so far – seem to be going in the right general direction. It is all about changing the incentives. Judicial reviews may have fallen off in number since the ending of the disastrous Strategic Development Zone process – which allowed local planning to be bypassed – but the system still allows objectors to search for procedural problems as a cover for not wanting a project to proceed.
And, crucially, when these problems are found, they can stall a project for a long period, rather than allowing the flaw to be righted quickly and the project to proceed. The courts are not meant to decide on the merits of a project – that is the job of the planning process. Nor is it unreasonable to set a cap on the fees that will be reimbursed by the State for judicial review proceedings, given the out-of-line scale of legal costs in the State.
The plan will also promise a sweep of existing regulations and how EU law is implemented here. The argument is that “gold-plating” – going beyond what is necessary to meet, say, EU environmental rules – is too common. Simplifying the rules will lessen the scope for procedural objections via judicial review.
The Government is right to make the case about dealing much better with the objections that meet major projects. But striking a balance in reforms is the challenge. And to succeed, the plan cannot just make dealing with objections its sole aim; other parts of the proposed plan from the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce of businesspeople and public servants also need to be focused on.
There have, unfortunately, been multiple points of failure. Planning now seems to be on a better footing with An Coimisiún Pleanála, and a fair and balanced system must be as priority.
But the whole process of project delivery across the public service and the courts needs to be shaken up and properly resourced. The changes put in place recently in departmental structures to try to lead to a more cohesive approach need to deliver.
The report is expected to refer to the prospect of emergency powers legislation to put vital projects through. This may be needed in some cases, and the State did use some existing legislation to fast-track the way for two new backup gas generators in 2022. But the goal must be to have a system that does not require emergency powers to be used. One that works properly, in other words.
Building infrastructure discomforts people. The residents of Dartmouth Square are worried about their houses being damaged by the works nearby, though they would be compensated for repairs needed.
They – and many, many others – will face noise and disturbance due to the MetroLink, Luas extensions, the major water projects and new housing and apartments. There is no point in decrying nimbyism when the current rules and incentives allow it to prosper.
They need to change. If the Government does not succeed with this, and really transmit a sense of urgency, then it will be in real trouble.
