National Development Plan (2025-2034)

That’s the wrong ratio, especially with Metro, DART+ and CACR all happening during the period of this plan. It’s also pretty disappointing to see knowledgeable people here rejoicing that the previous policy is gone just because it was a Green minister who put it in place. 2:1, or rather 66%/33% was the correct proportion. Nationally, our road network is in pretty good shape after the 1990-2010 period - there’s still work to be done, but the back was broken on it a long time ago- but our Public Transport infrastructure didn’t see the same level of improvements. A 2:1 split was, and still is, needed to balance the system. Without it, we’re just going to cripple our urban and suburban road networks with congestion in future.

The only problem I had with the previous 2:1 policy is that Finance didn’t increase the overall transport budget to allow both roads and PT to proceed at their required absolute levels of funding. Effectively, the plan was undermined by funding in a way that pitted PT and roads against each other in yet another stupid culture war as if they weren’t intrinsically linked. This move is the same kind of political opportunism that will hamstring our transport network.

I’m more shocked that people don’t understand the difference between ratios and absolute quantities, to be honest.

If the total transport budget increased by 33% or more, then I’d be fine with a 1:1 ratio - that would mean no change to the PT spend, but an increase in Roads spend too. Everyone happy.

The problem is that fixing the ratio like this doesn’t address the cost of what’s actually needed right now, nor does it account for the inevitable change of budgets later. The medium term PT pipeline is so expensive that, if it’s properly funded, this kind of fixed share will throw more over to roads than is actually needed - what’s the mechanism for dealing with this? Or (more likely), if a smaller budget is forced to be split 50/50, then the urgently needed PT projects will be slowed down in favour of non-urgent road construction.

And there’s a lot of spending needed for PT in this plan - we’ve about €20 billion of rail projects alone (MetroLink, CACR, DART+, Luas Finglas), without even looking at BusConnects, new ticketing, LocalLink, EV bus fleets, national rail electrification, cycleways and schools transport. Can anyone show me a list of credible national roads investments that come to €20 billion to match that?

I got to €8-10 billion by counting pretty much everything else too: The ones you mention are the only projects close to the billion euro range (I do hope N6 is not built - but I counted the same amount on a real outer bypass and a proper suburban road network for Galway). After that there’s a lot of really good projects that will “only” come in at 200-400 million on lower-trafficked primaries, then most of the secondary network is in the under €200 M range. N20 aside, We have a pretty good road network; we’re really only tidying up and filling in the gaps now.

Meanwhile, DART+ is about 3 billion. CACR is 2 billion. both of those are in the term of this NDP. MetroLink costs are heavily front-loaded into the first ten years, so that spending will fall within the NDP.

But everything is funded over 30 years: that’s how governments work. The problem is that each year there’s going to be a limit on how much can be borrowed for transport. Right now, we’re flush, so we can afford to spend big, but I really dislike the idea of any kind of artificial 1:1 rule - it favours “roads” over all other transport needs. As a general principle, I would have opposed the old 2:1 except that in that particular case it reflected the actual need for investments (and it was 1x “roads” versus 2x “every other type of project”). I really don’t see the need for 1:1 matching with PT and roads; the budget should be allocated based on need and benefit.

But don’t think I’m against more road investment. I’m not. I think this is great news. I just worry that a hard “1:1” rule will cause poor allocation of funds in future.