The Irish Government is advancing significant reforms aimed at reducing barriers to infrastructure delivery by addressing judicial review processes, environmental legal costs, and planning system inefficiencies.
According to correspondence obtained by the Business Post, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers wrote to Minister for Climate and Environment Darragh O’Brien in June 2025, warning that judicial reviews had become “one of the most significant barriers to infrastructure delivery,” calling for alignment between his department’s work and ongoing efforts to establish a new Environmental Legal Costs Scheme. The proposed scheme would cap recoverable legal fees in environmental cases at around €35,000, limiting the costs that applicants can recover from the State and aiming to reduce the volume of lengthy or procedural litigation related to environmental and planning decisions.
Alongside this, the Government is preparing to introduce a major infrastructure plan to cabinet on 2 December 2025. As reported, the plan will include two legislative measures: a Critical Infrastructure Bill, designed to fast-track a small number of strategic projects through prioritised and streamlined consenting processes; and an Emergency Powers Bill, which will allow direct government intervention and approval of projects deemed to be of national importance. The measures reflect recommendations from the Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce, with officials stating that Ireland must increase its “risk appetite” to overcome chronic delays in infrastructure delivery.
The reform package also proposes structural changes to the planning and regulatory system, including allowing consenting processes to run concurrently rather than sequentially, simplifying infrastructure guidelines, and establishing a new regulatory-simplification unit within the Department of Public Expenditure. These efforts are partly intended to address what Government officials describe as “over-transposition” or “gold-plating” of EU environmental directives, which they argue has created additional administrative steps compared with other member states.
These developments come amid growing concern from industry bodies over the impact of judicial reviews on essential infrastructure. The Construction Industry Federation recently warned that the planning and review regime is “overly prescriptive” and is “throttling” housing and infrastructure development. Rising judicial review volumes further underscore the challenge: An Coimisiún Pleanála recorded 127 judicial reviews lodged in the first nine months of 2025—nearing the 2024 record of 144 cases. The Law Society similarly noted that delays in the justice system and insufficient resourcing pose a risk to business confidence and Ireland’s competitiveness.
Recent reporting indicates that the Government is also considering reforms that would require courts to assess the likelihood of success before granting leave for judicial review, potentially filtering out lower-merit cases. If implemented alongside a costs cap, this may significantly reduce both the financial and temporal burden associated with contesting planning decisions.
