Ireland wants to build more and spend less. But who will actually deliver it?

Opinionbudget 2027 plans

Budget 2027 promised record infrastructure investment and a new taskforce to eliminate waste. The danger is that Ireland could end up saving money on the very capabilities needed to deliver its ambitions.

THE DUST MAY have well and truly settled on the ‘big day’ that was the Budget 2027 announcement, but after the showmanship of the day itself, the cycle of a budget is such that it’s only now we start to see the government’s plans in daylight.

And while Budget 2027 has promised record infrastructure investment, it also has in its ledgers new plans for a taskforce to eliminate waste, the Jack Chambers ‘Doge-style’ spending efficiency taskforce. The danger with these twin tracks is that Ireland could end up saving money on the very capabilities needed to deliver those infrastructure ambitions.

So, how did this happen? Well, there is a peculiarly Irish approach to solving problems in public administration. When something isn’t working, we establish a taskforce. When things aren’t moving quickly enough, we establish another one. And when public spending becomes uncomfortable, we establish a third body to find out where the money is going. I think Budget 2027 may have brought us to an interesting variation on this theme as we now have two taskforces potentially pulling the public sector in opposite directions.

One wants us to build things faster. The other wants us to spend money more efficiently.
Both objectives are perfectly reasonable. The difficulty is that the same people, organisations and suppliers are expected to achieve both. And therein lies the problem.

Same challenges, same teams

Budget 2027 provides for €125.6 billion in gross public expenditure, including a record €20.3 billion in capital investment. Housing, water infrastructure, transport, healthcare and defence are all competing for substantial resources. The government is understandably keen to demonstrate that Ireland is investing in its future.

As I have said before, announcing money is not the same as delivering infrastructure.
The €20.3 billion capital allocation largely reflects the investment trajectory already established under the National Development Plan. It is not an unexpected windfall that suddenly creates thousands of additional construction workers, engineers or project managers.

And Ireland’s infrastructure programmes do not operate in isolation. Housing developments, water treatment facilities, hospitals and transport projects frequently compete for the same contractors, specialist engineers, materials and skilled labour.
When everybody wants the same resources at the same time, prices rise, competition weakens, and delivery becomes more difficult.

We can announce another billion euro in capital expenditure. We cannot announce another thousand experienced engineers into existence. And this is the uncomfortable reality behind Ireland’s infrastructure ambitions. The constraint is increasingly not simply financial. It is our ability to organise, procure and deliver complex projects.

Change needed

At the budget, Minister Jack Chambers announced a new Public Spending Efficiency Taskforce to scrutinise day-to-day public expenditure and recommend improvements. It is intended to begin work within three months and influence future budgets.

There is considerable merit in examining whether taxpayers receive value for money. Nobody should defend waste, unnecessary bureaucracy or poorly managed contracts.
But there is a difference between reducing expenditure and improving efficiency.

Consider a public body preparing to deliver a major infrastructure project. It needs engineers, procurement specialists, commercial advisers, lawyers and experienced contract managers. These services cost money. Under an efficiency drive, they may become attractive targets because consultancy expenditure and professional fees are visible, measurable and comparatively easy to challenge.

Yet eliminating €500,000 in specialist advice from a €100 million project may look like excellent financial management until poor specifications, contract disputes or construction delays generate several million euros in additional costs. I believe that we have a remarkable capacity to celebrate the savings we can measure while overlooking the much greater cost we have created.

The National Children’s Hospital should have taught us that the initial contract price is only one part of a much larger financial and managerial challenge.

The Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce is intended to remove barriers and improve delivery. The new efficiency taskforce will examine expenditure and identify savings. Both will inevitably influence public procurement, the process through which government funding becomes contracts for roads, buildings, equipment and services.

But what happens when one taskforce demands faster delivery while another introduces additional approval requirements?

What happens when an organisation is encouraged to strengthen project management but simultaneously challenged to reduce professional services expenditure?

Or when procurement teams are expected to deliver increasingly complex contracts while operating with fewer resources?

We risk creating an environment where nobody wants to make a decision. I don’t think that additional scrutiny is automatically better governance. Sometimes it simply produces another committee, another report and another opportunity to postpone responsibility.

There is also a danger that efficiency becomes synonymous with the lowest price. And we have seen where this leads us. The cheapest tender is not necessarily the best value. A cheaper road that requires more maintenance, a digital system that locks an organisation into one supplier, or a building with higher operating costs may all look attractive at the point of purchase.

The taxpayer pays for those decisions long after the original procurement has been declared successful.

We need to stop measuring procurement success solely by how much we spend and start examining what we actually receive.

Layers of adminstration

Ireland has become very good at creating oversight structures. Yet accountability can become increasingly difficult to locate as responsibility is distributed across more organisational layers. When a major project fails, we can identify who approved the budget, who conducted the procurement and who reviewed the business case. It is sometimes considerably harder to identify who was actually responsible for ensuring that the project worked.

This is not an argument for weaker oversight. It is an argument for clearer ownership.
Public procurement cannot compensate for unrealistic political commitments, inadequate project planning, weak specifications or insufficient market capacity. Nor can procurement professionals manufacture competition where only a handful of suppliers possess the necessary expertise.

If government wants better outcomes, it must invest in the capability of the public sector to act as an intelligent customer. That means commercial expertise, market knowledge, strong contract management and the authority to make informed decisions.

I believe that there is a larger issue here. Many of the assets we are planning today should or rather have to be still functioning in 50 or even 100 years. Our water infrastructure, transport networks, hospitals and public buildings must survive economic shocks, technological change and an increasingly uncertain climate. Yet too much of our decision-making remains trapped within annual budgets and short-term expenditure targets.

Saving money this year by creating greater costs over the next 30 years is not efficiency.
It is deferred failure.

The new taskforce could make a valuable contribution if it examines outcomes, whole-life costs, duplication, supplier performance and the quality of public spending decisions. But if its principal achievement is another series of savings targets imposed on already stretched organisations, we may find ourselves building less while congratulating ourselves on spending more carefully.

What we need is a public sector equipped and empowered to turn those ambitions into results.

The real test of Budget 2027 will not be how much money was allocated, or how many savings the government identifies. It will be whether the infrastructure and public services promised to citizens are actually delivered.

Because the most expensive public project is not necessarily the one that costs the most. It may be the one we pay for but never properly deliver.