Accelerating Infrastructure Action Plan: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04
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PJ Murphy (FG), Agricultural Panel

As Fine Gael spokesperson on housing here in the Seanad, I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this motion on infrastructure. I have no doubt that housing is the single biggest crisis facing our State at the moment. However, the housing crisis is largely caused by an infrastructure crisis. In this State we were quite successful and timely in the way that we rolled out our broadband infrastructure right across the State. However, as my colleague mentioned, in some parts of the country we are still largely lacking when it comes to our electricity infrastructure, our water infrastructure and especially our wastewater infrastructure in many parts of both urban and rural Ireland.
As the Minister and Cathaoirleach will know, in this State we have 545 rural villages that are currently completely unserviced with wastewater infrastructure. That is 545 rural Irish villages that have been effectively closed to development since 2011. In my local area, a number of villages which have scope for development, such as Clarinbridge, Craughwell, Ardrahan, Kilcolgan, Ballinderreen, Laban, Kilchreest, Peterswell, Shanaglish and Nogra, have all been without the granting of a single planning application for a housing development since 2011 solely due to the fact that those settlements lack wastewater infrastructure.
As the Minister will know, just this week the Minister for housing brought to Cabinet a very positive new plan around developer-led wastewater infrastructure. This plan allows for a developer to develop up to 40 houses in an unserviced village or an unserviced part of an existing town with wastewater treatment facilities, built and funded by the developer and completely at the cost to the developer but built to a standard specified by Uisce Éireann. On completion of the project, this wastewater infrastructure will be taken in hand and under the ownership of Uisce Éireann. I have no doubt this will be transformative for hundreds of small, unserviced villages right across Ireland and that this measure alone will allow thousands of Irish young people to come back, buy homes and live in their native villages in their native communities.
However, it is key that local authorities buy into this. We must impose upon the planning sections of our local authorities plans to facilitate these developments and developer-led wastewater infrastructure into unserviced settlements. We will have achieved nothing if the planning permission cannot be granted after the Bill is enacted.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-04