Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan

Ireland’s “Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan” aims to unblock systemic bottlenecks to deliver “critical infrastructure”. Our Construction, Infrastructure & Utilities team explores if the planned actions will overcome the major barriers.

The Irish Government published its “Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan” in December 2025, which was prepared by the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce. The primary aim is to unblock systemic bottlenecks to deliver “critical infrastructure” on key projects in sectors including housing, energy, water and transport under the €275 billion National Development Plan for 2026–2035.

The Report acknowledges the need for reform. While individual processes and public sector agencies tasked with delivering infrastructure may individually have merit, collectively they result in lengthy timelines and fragmented processes that often run sequentially instead of in parallel, resulting in increased costs.

The Report cites 12 major barriers to delivery including complex regulations, uncertainty of funding and pipeline, construction sector capacity and rigid procurement. It also acknowledges the need to rebalance rights, which currently favour individuals’ rights to object over the common good. This has been readily evidenced by the surge in the numbers of judicial reviews in recent years.

There are 30 time-lined actions across four key pillars:

Pillar 1: Legal Reform

Key actions include:

• Introduce new legislation: Such as a Critical Infrastructure Bill, to mandate faster processing and statutory timelines to progress infrastructure projects.
• Emergency powers: This would provide new powers for the Government to bypass standard planning hurdles for specific infrastructure in urgent situations.
• Judicial review reform: This would include progressing reforms and immediately commencing the process for reviewing the scale of fees for environmental challenges, which has now commenced the public consultation period.

Pillar 2: Regulatory Reform

Key actions include:

• Simplification unit: Establish a new unit to remove redundant regulations and move away from sequential approvals toward parallel processing. This would aim to make approvals proportional to risks and improve regulatory body coordination.
• Developer-led utilities: Enable private developers to lead delivery of critical water and electricity infrastructure under State oversight.
• Statutory timelines: Mandate strict decision-making timelines for regulatory bodies.

Pillar 3: Coordination & Delivery

Key actions include:

• Centralised oversight: The Department of Public Expenditure would assume a central coordination role with multi-year funding to provide certainty to utilities and create a joint utilities/transport clearing house.
• Technology adoption: Make increased use of AI and promote Modern Methods of Construction to boost productivity and build skills/tech capacity.
• Risk appetite statements: The Government would provide approved risk appetite statements to balance risk and delivery and explicitly incorporate the "cost of delay" into decision-making. This aims to reduce risk aversion in the public sector with a view to also increasing construction sector capacity.

Pillar 4: Public Acceptance

Key actions include:

• Benefits realisation framework: Clearly demonstrate the social and economic value of projects to local communities to reduce resistance and raise awareness of infrastructure's benefits for the "common good”.
• Land access: Create a duty for State bodies to cooperate in making public land available for critical projects.

Summary

The Report, including consultations with industry which preceded it, indicate strong Government support to initiate these much needed reforms. While a significant number of individual actions are needed, how each of these interact with each other in an overall system is key. So, it is broadly welcomed that the Taskforce will remain in place to monitor and track progress, and it is hoped that this will include analysing the collective impact of the 30 actions.

This is one of the most comprehensive and ambitious Irish Government Report in recent times and the timeline for implementation of the actions in the Report ranges from Q1 2026 to Q2 2027. However, enacting new and wide ranging legislation can be complex and difficult to push through quickly, as has happened in Ireland in recent years. That said, the report adds extra weight and impetus to legal reform that is already envisaged, such as the judicial review reforms in the Planning & Development Act 2024. While the ambition of this Report is laudable and has been well received by stakeholders in industry, it will require strong support and buy-in across the public and private sector to make the ambition a reality.

For more information and expert guidance on any contemplated projects in 2026 and beyond, contact a member of our Construction, Infrastructure & Utilities team.

The content of this article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice.