Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not accept that. The Deputy is perpetuating the idea in his question and the way he put it to me of a perpetually inefficient public service. I fundamentally disagree. For example, the delivery by our public service of making a broadband plan happen, its ability to make projects happen in higher universities and in places of third-level learning throughout the country, and the speed with which those projects are happening, matches what the private sector can do.

I look at what our semi-State organisations, such as ESB and Bord na Móna, are doing at the moment and they are a match for anything the private sector is doing.

As somebody who has worked in both the private and public sectors, the complex truth is that each of them is good at different things. The public sector and public service can always do better, but when it comes to the procurement and delivery of, in particular, larger projects, I do not accept the inference that the private sector is automatically better or more efficient. Of course, the private sector rarely has to publish information about costs and original timings in the way we must. That is the big difference. Is the Deputy suggesting the private sector has not had the difficulties we have had in the past two years in the tendering and delivery of projects and the time it takes? Of course it has. The difference is that companies in the private sector do not have to publish that information unless they have to make it available at a top-line level or an overall basis to their shareholders. Such companies do not have a responsibility to go into individual projects like we do because we are accountable to the taxpayer and the Oireachtas. As someone who makes the case for the role of the State on so many other occasions, I find it inconsistent that the Deputy makes that argument, on the one hand, while, on the other, he perpetuates ideas I think are frankly disrespectful to those who are, at times, involved in the delivery of projects. Things are far from perfect but they are better than the Deputy is suggesting.