Delivery Team

National Sustainable Mobility Policy | Year One Progress Report

SMP Leadership Group, Delivery Team, and Pathfinder Programme

Leadership Group

Delivery Team

The SMP Leadership Group (LG) was established in May 2022 with a secretariat provided by the Department of Transport. Membership of the LG is composed of the National Transport Authority (NTA), Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), the regional assemblies (SRA, NWRA, and EMRA), City and County Management Association (CCMA), Department of Housing, Local Government, and Heritage (DHLGH), Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC), Road Safety Authority (RSA), Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), as well as several Divisions of the Department of Transport.

The SMP included a commitment to agree a mechanism for the delivery of a programme of ‘pathfinder’ projects which would seek to highlight a broad variety of innovative projects with the potential to transform sustainable mobility options in our cities, towns, and rural areas, and to deliver these projects by 2025. It was envisaged in that this programme would bring increased momentum to the delivery of projects at a local level, providing templates for replication and scaling up elsewhere.

The Delivery Team (DT), which consists of representatives from the LG’s own organisations as well as broader representation when required, was tasked with identifying projects for inclusion in a new Pathfinder Programme. Following a request from the Minister for Transport for local authorities to submit their most transformative project ideas, the Delivery Team assessed these against several criteria including overall suitability for the programme in terms of policy alignment, level of ambition, capacity to offer a new approach to addressing sustainable mobility challenges, and ability to deliver by end 2025. A final list of 35 projects was approved by the Minister for the programme in October 2022.

To quickly build the appropriate structures, processes and engagement needed to drive the ongoing implementation of the Policy, the LG met monthly during 2022 and has now transitioned to a quarterly meeting schedule.

During its first six months, the LG contributed to the development of an Implementation Plan for the governance and oversight of SMP delivery, including the establishment of a PMO support function within the Department of Transport. It also considered further work items such as a detailed transport-related input to the National Energy Security Framework, the identification of barriers/obstacles to SMP action delivery, the establishment of a Research Network, and the development of a Climate Action Communications Strategy.

Initially meeting on a weekly basis to develop the Pathfinder Programme, the Delivery Team now meets on a monthly basis to monitor progress on, and mitigate risks to, the delivery of that Programme.

In addition, the LG established a Delivery Team to provide oversight of SMP implementation at operational level as well as to formulate a programme of ‘pathfinder’ projects linked to the SMP and to be delivered by 2025.