THIS summer's update to the national development plan (NDP) was a lot more whimper than bang. The launch of previous iterations of the plan harkened back to the heydays of the Celtic Tiger, with everyone from the Taoiseach down to aspiring councillors claiming credit for the appearance of their pet projects on a 100-page, multi-billion-euro shopping list.
This year's update was surprisingly sedate. Gone was the list of every road and roundabout that was receiving funding, replaced with a high-level review of the plan to date and future commitments grouped by topic, with departments expected to work out the details.
Before 2017, NDPs were five-year documents that noted the major infrastructure projects a government was committing to. That changed with the publication of the Project Ireland 2040 plan, which looked roughly a quarter of a century ahead to identify the major investments Ireland would need to grow. This includes expectations of Cork city's population alone rising by 50% to 314,000 people, and a list of the major enablers needed to accommodate them and unlock the region's economic potential. The plan also set out opportunities and enablers for economic growth.
Following the publication of the plan, a new NDP was launched in 2018, which was updated in 2021 and again in 2025. The updates mapped the progress of the plan, how its context has changed as time rolls on, and the commitments for the years ahead.
While the latest update is light on detail, all of the projects from previous plans are a matter of public record, allowing a good opportunity to examine how it's doing, eight years on.
M20 Cork-Limerick motorway
A motorway between Cork and Limerick has been a crucial but controversial part of efforts to rebalance development for cities outside of Dublin.
The Project Ireland 2040 plan identifies connectivity between Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Galway as essential for unlocking potential growth in these cities. The plan identified Cork as a particular problem, with the driving time per km from other cities to Cork 30-40% slower than a trip to Dublin.
The weakest link is clearly between the two major cities of Cork and Limerick, where a 100km journey can take 90 minutes in ideal circumstances, but usually a lot longer than that, due to traffic in the numerous towns the current route goes through. The winding, rural route is also considered one of the most dangerous in the country, unsuitable for the level of traffic with regular crashes and approximately 70 fatalities in the last three decades.
Rail interconnectivity is also poor, with no direct links between Cork and other cities besides Dublin.
The motorway route has been controversial, however. For many commuters, regular intercity travellers, and particularly business interests, the route is seen as essential to making travel shorter and safer and opening up economic synergy between Ireland's smaller cities. On the other hand, environmentalists have opposed the need for fossil fuel infrastructure that provides lower capacity than public transport alternatives. Farmers and landowners also have concerns about the impact on their areas, along with the multiple regional towns being impacted by bypasses.
However, successive governments have ploughed ahead with the project, and it is finally starting to take shape.
Earlier this summer, a proposed map for the project was published, showing a 120km route between Blarney and Patrickswell, with bypasses in Charleville, Buttevant, and Mallow.
The route also includes 93km of active travel infrastructure. It is expected to cut the point-to-point journey from Blarney to Patrickswell from 60-90 minutes to 40 minutes.
However, don't expect to be driving it anytime soon. The proposed route is still at public consultation stage, meaning a design is still years away. The project is now entering an expected two-year period for various surveys and impact assessments in order to deliver a proper design, and only then can the planning application process begin. Factor in the various planning, funding, and legal issues that plague projects of this scale, tendering for development, and a lengthy construction, and the best-case scenario says we're a decade away.
Dunkettle Interchange
A more successful project has been the Dunkettle Interchange, which was also identified as a key enabler for Cork in Project Ireland 2040, and commitments were made in the subsequent NDPs. Works on the project predate Project Ireland 2040, though, as the need for a significant upgrade of this major bottleneck had long been the bane of commuters' lives.
Preliminary work began in 2016, and the major works commenced in 2020. The interchange was officially opened in February 2024.
Traffic volumes on the interchange can hit up to 120,000 vehicles on its busiest days, and Transport Infrastructure Ireland believes that journey times are now being reduced by an average of 50%.
N22 Macroom-Ballyvourney bypass
Another success story for the recent development plans is the N40 Macroom-Ballyvourney bypass.
Similar to the Cork-Limerick road, this major route linking the city to North Cork and into Kerry was previously inadequate for the volume of traffic, made up of narrow lane roads, sharp corners, and bottlenecks in Macroom and Ballyvourney.
Like the Dunkettle Interchange, upgrading this route had long been on the agenda, with various minor works taking place for years, but no major commitments.
That changed with the 2018 NDP, which called out the bypass amongst a number of other inter-urban roads for attention. By 2020, work had commenced on this €280m project, which involved some of the deepest cuts ever excavated and blasted in Ireland to cut through the foothills of the Cork and Kerry mountains.
The first section of the project opened in 2022 and the full route was open by November 2023, cutting approximately 17 minutes off the journey from Cork to Killarney -- and on significantly safer roads -- along with reducing traffic in Macroom and Ballyvourney.
Lower Lee flood relief scheme
Anyone who remembers November 2009 will agree that there is a desperate need for flood prevention measures in Cork city. The issue is that no one can agree on what needs to be done.
On November 19 of that year, the River Lee burst its banks and the ensuing flood displaced 6,000 people and did an estimated €130m of damage across the city.
The 2009 flood was an extreme event -- weeks of heavy rainfall, high tides, and a decision to release water from the Iniscarra Dam -- but significant flooding can still happen at much lower thresholds. Minor flooding has been a regular feature in the city centre during heavy rains, while the city suffered larger scale flooding in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2020.
The Lower Lee flood relief scheme was noted in the Project Ireland 2040 plan in 2017, but the project was originally mooted in 2006 and entered serious planning in 2013.
By the time of the 2040 plan, a debate on the scale and options was already raging. The Office of Public Works (OPW) were pushing for flood walls around the city to act as barriers during extreme tide, which has been strongly opposed by a grassroots campaign that wants larger scale work up and downstream, including forestry and a tidal barrier to prevent those extreme tides in the first place. While successive versions of the NDP have come down on the OPW's side, almost a decade on and with up to €17m already spent, a final design for the scheme has still yet to be agreed. At the outset of the project in 2013, the OPW expected work to begin in 2020, but several floods later we're still waiting. The current schedule suggests that public consultation will begin later this year, and then going to the minister for public expenditure by early 2026 to begin the necessary planning and funding processes.
The suggested 2027 date for construction to begin seems wildly optimistic. Projects of this scale are prone to major delays at the best of times and this one is both incredibly complex and incredibly controversial.
Compare it to the smaller scale Morrison's Island public realm and flood defence scheme, which received planning approval in 2018, was challenged as far as the Supreme Court before getting the go ahead in 2022, and only began construction last year.
As of right now, the Lower Lee scheme has yet to reach the planning permission process, so expect this one to rumble on for years.
Public transport
A major feature of Project Ireland 2040, reaffirmed in each update to the NDP, is investment in public transport infrastructure.
The 2040 plan highlighted the need for enhanced city-wide public transport in Cork, the development of an east-west corridor from Mahon to Ballincollig, a north-south corridor to the airport, and improvements to existing rail services.
The solutions to these needs are a complicated web of different projects, which have all developed at different paces, but progress has been made, however slow.
The 2018 NDP predicted that the Cork BusConnects programme could be complete by 2027, but it now looks like the first of several phases won't be in place until 2026.
While considerable work has been done on the planning and design and infrastructural work has been picking up pace, the project is several years behind schedule and hasn't been helped by a serious driver shortage on existing routes, making it incredibly challenging to roll out the new and expanded ones.
The proposed Mahon-Ballincollig corridor has developed into a plan for a Cork Luas, though it's still at a very early stage.
Earlier this year, Transport Infrastructure Ireland unveiled the emerging preferred route, which would see an 18km line with 25 stops linking Mahon to the south docklands, Kent Station, Patrick Street, UCC, CUH, MTU, and Ballincollig. The initial public consultation on the route ended earlier this summer. However, at this early stage no clear timeline has emerged, and even 2040 might be ambitious.
Going from the preferred route to an actual design could take years, the planning process could take years, and construction could take years. For reference, the Dublin Luas was first proposed in 1994 and opened in 2004.
There's been a bit more progress on the existing rail network, with major works to increase the capacity of commuter lines. The 2021 NDP noted a target of 10-minute frequency for commuter trains to and from the city to satellite towns, along with upgrading to electrified lines. Earlier this year the first phase of the project was completed, with the official opening of Kent Station's new platform.
In addition, the Glounthane to Midleton twin-track project has been given the green light, along with upgrades to signalling and communication.
Work is also ongoing to finalise the designs and planning for upgrade to the Mallow and Cobh stations, and new stations to be opened at Blarney, Monard, Blackpool, Tivoli, Dunkettle, Ballynoe, Carrigtwohill West, and Water-Rock, though the timeline is still up in the air.
Upgrades to intercity travel is still at blue-sky thinking stage, however. High-speed rail linking Cork to Belfast via Dublin was mooted in the original Project Ireland 2040 plan, but little mention has been made of the idea since.
Port of Cork
Project Ireland 2040 noted the importance of the Port of Cork for high-quality international connectivity, and subsequent versions of the NDP have made commitments to a number of different projects to upgrade it.
A good example of the opportunities these upgrades to the port have created is a new €80m commuter ferry service, which was unveiled this year. The Harbour Link ferry, currently at planning stage, would use all-electric ferries to bring passengers on a route between the city centre and Crosshaven, with 17 stops in total including Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Blackrock Castle, Little Island, Passage West, Ringaskiddy, and Cobh. But other work around the port has been focused on reorientating it away from the city to Ringaskiddy. The first piece of this puzzle was the opening of a new container terminal there in 2022, at a cost of €89m.
The Port of Cork Masterplan 2050 was launched in 2023, giving more detail into plans for the port which will see activity consolidated in the harbour with city adjacent sites being shifted to more suitable use. Timelines are rough, but work is ongoing on making the masterplan a reality.
The other major piece of the puzzle is on dry land though -- the M28 Cork-Ringaskiddy.
This piece of road infrastructure spent years mired in delays, local opposition, and legal challenge, but contracts on the €456m project were signed earlier this year and the first round of blasting began in recent weeks.
Crawford Art Gallery
A major expansion to the Crawford Art Gallery was noted in the 2018 NDP as a crucial investment for the future of culture in Ireland, and work has been going at a steady pace since.
The gallery temporarily closed its doors last September, allowing for a €30m project to modernise and expand the gallery.
When it reopens in 2027, the gallery will have 50% more space, including a new top floor gallery, along with a reorientation of the building and new garden space to better incorporate it into Emmet Place.
Events Centre
Two years after Enda Kenny turned the sod on the events centre in a publicity stunt that has haunted Leeside Fine Gaelers for the last decade, this major project was noted with a single line in the 2018 NDP.
Serious progress had obviously been made by the time of the 2021 NDP, where it received a whole non-committal paragraph.
To say the Events Centre is long delayed would be a crime against understatements. In 2014, developer BAM won a tender for €20m in state funding for a development that was estimated to cost in the region of €50m in total.
However, as the years rolled on, costs spiralled, with the State asked to front up more money, which required rigorous scrutiny before sign-off. By 2020, the State's contribution had risen to €50m, and the pandemic had added another €7m by 2022 before rapid inflation threw the costings into further disarray.
Ultimately, the project, costs, and legal situation had evolved so much that in October 2024, the government announced that the project would be re-tendered. This new tender was expected to last for up to 18 months, with a group of experts appointed to oversee the process, but no timeline beyond that.
At the current pace, we can just about hope the project progresses enough to deserve a second paragraph in the 2030 NDP.