What role will your organisation play in meeting Ireland’s national infrastructural needs?
Ferga Kane
EY is here to support the delivery of Ireland’s infrastructure plans as well as the Climate Action Plan 2021. Each part of our business is involved in supporting infrastructure delivery, including work in both the public and private sector on infrastructure development. For example, we are currently supporting the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications by providing oversight on the rollout of the National Broadband Plan and we are supporting ESB in its smart metering programme.
We are also supporting the NTA and TII on several transport projects including BusConnects and MetroLink. More broadly, there is our work supporting Irish businesses who are crucial to the successful delivery of infrastructure projects. We combine our local expertise and knowledge with insights from specialists across our global network, ensuring we consistently deliver best practice and the greatest success for the projects we are involved in.
Eamon Gallen
Irish Water is an enabler of growth and development, particularly in housing. Last year, Irish Water approved 34,579 units. From our own perspective, without Irish Water, there is no housing, there is no industry, and there is no FDI because you cannot operate without utilities. One of the things that we have undertaken is publishing capacity registers. These are published on our website, water.ie, and issued to all local authorities to illustrate where we have capacity and where we do not.
David Kelly
Gas Networks Ireland is a key player in Ireland’s infrastructure. The €2.7 billion national gas network is publicly owned, provides 50 per cent of Ireland’s electricity and 40 per cent of our heating. Project Ireland 2040 envisages an additional one million people living in the State and the idea that there would be insufficient electricity or energy to support that growth is anathema. Mirroring the Government’s agenda, we want to increase renewable electricity by increasing renewable gas to generate it, without any significant cost to the taxpayer or disruption to energy supply.
If Ireland can get to 80 per cent renewable electricity by 2030, that would be fantastic. However, the gas network will be vital to not only reliably meet the remaining 20 per cent but also to provide flexible back up for renewables at times when the wind is not blowing, and the sun is not shining. We also need to remember that electricity only meets around one-third of Ireland’s total energy. In the longer term, gas, particularly the adoption of biomethane and hydrogen, is key. Our role is to provide that enabling infrastructure, to ensure that it is maintained and future ready.
Peter O’Shea
ESB is investing approximately €1 billion in capital expenditure every year. We are one of the most significant providers of infrastructure in Ireland. Our business is closely aligned with delivery of the Climate Action Plan and, ultimately, the decarbonisation of society between 2040 and 2050. Electricity is the vector for decarbonisation.
We are investing in renewables, both onshore and offshore, and transmission and distribution capability to ensure that we can take those new sources of electricity, which are more dispersed, and deliver them to a very different type of customer in years to come. On the supply side, we want to ensure customers have the toolkits to engage fully with the transition and the market. There is a need for a bottom-up approach where we are engaging with customers and building them into the transition as well as a top-down approach.
Cathal Masterson
For TII, there are three main areas of focus over the next decade. Firstly, maintaining and investing in the national road network, particularly the high-capacity interurban routes which connect the regions and industry to both national and international markets, via our ports and airports. The second is public transport infrastructure both in terms of upgrading the road network to facilitate increased bus usage, alongside the operation and expansion of light rail networks in Dublin and Cork, and delivery of MetroLink. The third area is delivery of new national cycling infrastructure and greenways, which TII is keen to develop as a multiannual programme over the next decade.