The Government has a credibility problem. Most of its big targets are a fiction. From climate, to housing, to infrastructure, to child poverty, to childcare costs – most of the things it has said it will do are not achievable. Not by a long way. And this has a corrosive effect on confidence in the Coalition, as well as leading to poor policymaking.
The Coalition is a prisoner of the fantasies contained in its own Programme for Government – and announced since, in a few cases. Nobody believes them, but as they are still “policy” everyone has to pretend they are relevant. Time is wasted drawing up more ways in which they won’t be achieved – rather than prioritising on the basis of reality and focusing on delivery.
It is hard to know where to start. There is the target of building 300,000 houses during the Government’s term. Of cutting carbon emissions in 2030 by 51 per cent from 2018 levels. Of slashing monthly childcare costs to €200 a month. Of reducing patient waiting times in the health services to 10 to 12 weeks. Of cutting the rate of consistent child poverty below 3 per cent by 2030 from close to 8 per cent now. Of ending homelessness by 2030.
Each sectoral target has a series of sub-targets. All the numbers add up. It is all internally consistent. But that does not mean it will actually happen. In the environment, the goal is 5 gigawatts of operational offshore wind by 2030 – in fact, it is hard to see how any new offshore wind will be operational until into the 2030s. The aim is an energy system 80 per cent reliant on renewables by 2030; 945,000 EVs on the road and 500,000 homes retrofitted by the same date. A recent report by the Climate Change Advisory Council stated that the rate of retrofitting, which has risen, would need to double to achieve this. Just 10 out of 74 delayed climate action plan measures from reports from 2023 onwards have been implemented, including vital national omissions, such as revised national guidelines for onshore wind. The 2026 plan is still awaited.
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Ambition in housing delivery is welcome, but can it be matched on the ground? This week Fingal County Council said it wanted to build 18,500 homes on the Dunsink site in north Dublin, a much higher density than had been previously suggested for the site. This may reflect pressure from Government to zone more land for housing and plan more homes, so it is seen to be advancing towards its targets.
But with new Dart and Luas transport links not due to be completed for years, there are real questions about the ability of local infrastructure to cope. And Uisce Éireann says big water delivery and sewerage projects need to be delivered to provide capacity for new developments on this scale.
The Government is – in a welcome development – trying to align planning with delivery of this kind of infrastructure and speed the whole process. But Dunsink shows how complicated this will be.
And it underlines a wider point, which is that the whole concept of “denser living”, in which people live in smaller homes closer to city centres, has still not been explained in any serious way by Government ministers. Compact living – where convenience and local amenities compensate for less private space – is a concept that lives only on the pages of Government strategy documents. The Irish dream remains the semi-D.
These mega-targets are damaging the Coalition in a few respects. The most obvious, of course, is that the Opposition can point to numerous “failures”. The Coalition has created a rod for its own back, in particular by setting targets for things it cannot directly control – such as private building of houses.
The Government is tying itself in knots with its multiple targets and strategies. It urgently needs to pare them back and decide where the priorities are for implementation
But the real damage is more subtle. It is leaving a gap in policy planning in vital areas and a failure to prioritise in the allocation of resources. In energy policy, the now-guaranteed failure of significant wind energy coming on stream by 2030, for example, leaves Ireland’s whole transition strategy looking shaky and creates a long gap to be bridged.
Not enough attention has been paid, until very recently, to developing energy supply security in the meantime – particularly for gas. A new “emergency” floating gas facility to store LPG is planned for the Shannon estuary, but in the official documents all references to a target completion date are redacted.
And if a lot more offshore wind – or some other source of clean energy – is not on stream some time early in the 2030s, with a grid to transport it, then the whole climate strategy is upended.
A new White Paper is promised from Minister for Energy Darragh O’Brien, following consultation with the ubiquitous “stakeholders”. It needs to be ambitious, but also based in reality. And a promised taskforce strategy to protect consumers and look at how the energy sector operates has not yet been published.
Vital questions are also being left hanging. An example is the availability of construction employees to build all the big infrastructure – including Metro – construct new homes and retrofit older ones. Most of the targets are being left out there, but the reality is that they cannot all be achieved at once. When delays are announced – such as in some Dart and Luas project – it knocks on to other areas. Like the plans for Dunsink.
This issue needs to be tackled head on, with much greater urgency in training and retraining in the sector and a drive to increase productivity. Every Government construction strategy in the past decade has paid homage to the advantages of “modern methods of construction” but a 2025 Government action plan shows how much needs to be done to make real progress here.
The Government is tying itself in knots with its multiple targets and strategies. It urgently needs to pare them back and decide where the priorities are for implementation. The drive to develop infrastructure more quickly and speed the housing process is welcome – and a sign that things can be changed. But the traditional Father Ted response to a problem – “is there anything to be said for another strategy?”, most likely developed by consultants – is still all too common. A real focus on getting “stuff” done in a few key areas is what is needed. Proper, focused targets are central to this.
