The Projects and Construction Review (Ireland)

By Conor Owens, Mary Dunne and Michael Kennedy¹

I INTRODUCTION

Project finance is a well understood and widely used model for carrying out infrastructure projects in Ireland across all sectors including health, education, roads, rail, waste, water, IT and energy.

PPPs are the most widely used model of project finance in Ireland. The government set up the National Development Finance Agency ('the NDFA') in 2006 to procure all infrastructure projects with a capital value in excess of €30 million. The NDFA procures all PPP projects other than in the transport and water sectors.

Roads projects are carried out by the National Roads Authority ('the NRA') and rail projects are carried out by the Railway Procurement Agency or by Iarnród Ã0ireann. Project finance is also widely used in the energy sector, particularly on renewable energy projects such as wind farms. This is not the PPP model but is a very typical structure where finance is secured by way of a