National Development Plan (2025-2034)

marno21 · 19-02-2026 01:33AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124247267#Comment_124247267

It's very hard to compare spending on various forms of transport as the scope of the spending on either form of transport is hard to define.

The budget for new National Roads construction this year is €368m. The overall spending on roads this year is €1.5bn, which includes maintenance, pothole filling, resurfacing, "climate change adaption", training grants, bridge rehabilitation, Roads Office expenses, PPP payments etc

If you wanted to compare PT vs roads, you would have to define the scope of the PT spending. Does it include just construction of new PT infrastructure, or where do we stop? Do we include maintenance, servicing of vehicles, driver expenses, new train purchses. Do we consider CIE operating expenses? Pensions? The buses use the roads which are funded out of the afforementioned 1.5bn, how do we account for that?

It's hard to draw the line here. But if we are comparing new roads construction funding vs new public transport infrastructure funding, I'd be pretty confident that the costs of MetroLink + CACR + DART+ + BusConnects far outweigh the spending on new roads infrastructure over the next few years.

Hibernicis · 19-02-2026 01:35AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124247530#Comment_124247530

The M20 is as much a Cork-Limerick busway as it is a highway for cars and freight.

That’s actually an excellent point, especially when it’s expressed so succinctly.

Aontachtoir · 19-02-2026 08:55AM

I think focusing on the 2:1 spending ratio is probably misleading. MetroLink is such an expensive project that the government could build no other PT infrastructure and still probably approach the 2:1 ratio for new roads. There should be a recognition of the costs of maintaining existing roads in any such ratio.

I would rather focus on kilometres delivered. How many kilometres of roads are built for private cars, versus how many kilometres of bus lanes, segregated cycle paths, greenways etc. I would count anything that I can drive my car on as a road for private cars (which would include the M20 as proposed), as the private car automatically shunts public transport into second place.

hans aus dtschl · 19-02-2026 10:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124247543#Comment_124247543

Fully agreed yep.

And also agreed that Metrolink impacts everything here. If metrolink (and various Luas, DART etc projects) move forward then PT spend will dramatically increase. As you rightly say, it's really difficult to determine what the exact spends are. Even just the active transport spend is a splatter of used and unused funding, roads and offline projects.

hans aus dtschl · 19-02-2026 11:18AM

Also just another note, the roads construction pipeline is reasonably bare and some of these roads may not progress etc. So all we can really look at are the headline "allocation" figures as a statement of intent.

Politics discussion alert:

There seems to be an intent to boost "roads spending" in this PfG. I believe that may turn out to be an overcorrection from the previous PfG (roads spend seemed to be impeded). The "roads" thing was a solid attack line against the previous government, but most people don't really care about roads, trains, etc, they just care about "transport". And the rationale to boost road spend will mostly benefit more rural TD's (Sean Canney etc).

It is quite sensitive though because FF and FG have "urban" TD's whose constituents consider transport to be a hot topic. So the big parties are "threading the needle" here and the left-leaning opposition are reasonably unified around the issue. Delaying DART+ etc is dangerous. If Metrolink doesn't move, they will likely feel exposed.

Maybe that means we're all shoulder-to-the-wheel on Metrolink, though, which would be great!

marno21 · 26-03-2026 01:33AM

It seems quite clear now that there is something holding up planning submissions for projects in the roads programme, non project specific. I posted in 2023 here that there was c. 10 projects which could have been submitted for planning in the subsequent 12-18 months. None of these have been submitted. The only major project that has been submitted for planning since the commencement of the Covid-19 pandemic is the Slane bypass.

The Donegal TEN-T project has yet again missed its January date, and no updates have been provided in 2026.

The Virginia bypass planning submission has been deferred until Q4 2027

The N24 Cahir-Limerick Junction planning submission has been delayed until 2027 (In March 2025, the plan was H1 2026 with business case submission in Q4 2025)

Really bizarre.

KrisW1001 · 26-03-2026 10:03AM

It's not going to improve in the near term. Remember what Putin did to the cost of diesel fuel, and how it bankrupted one roadbuilder? Well, it looks like his buddy and his gimp are going to do a lot worse.

I don't know how any company could submit a tender for anything right now when they don't know what the price of fuel will be for all of their plant equipment.

Metrolink is the biggest project at risk as its currently in tendering, but a lot of road projects will have their BCA ratios severely hit if they get to the assessment stage and a litre of diesel costs €2.50-3.00. Road construction uses enormous amounts of fuel.

Glenomra · 26-03-2026 12:03PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124341200#Comment_124341200

Interesting; have you any idea what is causing the hold-up. As someone familiar with the inherent delays in all Irish departmental work is it possible that it's just slow and inefficient work practices.

Aontachtoir · 26-03-2026 12:25PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124341461#Comment_124341461

It’s surprising to me that given how advanced Chinese electric cars are and how much construction they do that the construction sector still seems to be entirely diesel-dependent with little to no electric alternatives.

Separately, if there are no big roads going ahead in the near future at least that means plenty of money for greenways and urban active travel infrastructure. But who’s to bet we won’t get those either…

KrisW1001 · 26-03-2026 12:40PM

Battery EVs don't scale well to sizes above a large cargo van.. most EVs are able to match passenger cars and light commercial vehicles on range only because those vehicles spend so much time cruising, using a very small amount of power. Load up an EV and you'll see it's range plummet.

(In case this sounds a bit Daily Mail, I should mention that I drive an EV and fully believe they're the only viable future for private passenger transport... but I'm not blind to the shortcomings of current technology)

Construction plant machinery operates on a much heavier duty cycle, and on big jobs the equipment can run for up to 20 hours a day, leaving no time for recharging with current technology. Also, construction often happens away from electrical infrastructure needed for that charging, with site power usually provided for by generating equipment running on.. diesel.