Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

One of the initiatives taken last year at a pan-European level was to increase capital in the EIB by €10 billion. Different countries were levied for their contributions. Of course, that €10 billion leverages up an awful lot of extra activity, because that is just the seed capital. The EIB will not fully fund a project. It works on the basis of partnerships, which can be with the government or with a private investor. Either way, seed capital is necessary up to a significant percentage of the cost required. We are in negotiation with the EIB, which has pledged to participate in the growing economy in Ireland and help drive it on further. The EIB is already co-funding three groups of schools. Bundles of seven, eight or nine schools are put out to contract. The EIB is now on the third bundle of co-financing. It has also committed to co-financing 19 community health centres and it expects to be able to release that funding in August.

There have been discussions with the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources on exactly what the Deputy is talking about. One of the EIB's difficulties is that everybody is conscious of the issue of credit rating. The EIB has a triple-A credit rating and if it were to engage in partnership with a counter-party that had a low credit rating, it would put at risk its own credit rating. Getting counter-parties that have sufficiently high credit ratings to go into partnership with it is one of the issues. That was one of the things holding up the Newlands Cross separation of traffic project on the road to Wicklow and Wexford. I think we have overcome that now, however, because there are various ways one can leverage up the credit rating of the partners.

As a matter of principle, the EIB is willing to provide us with money. It is a question of working out how schemes will operate. We will see significant progress being made in that area. The EIB representatives are coming over in the course of our EU Presidency. Uniquely, they will have a full management meeting here in a couple of weeks' time. They are interested in looking at some of the projects, particularly schools, with a view to giving us a strong approval rating and committing to further expenditure. That is the way to go. I fully agree with the Deputy.