Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for allowing me to contribute a second time. I wish to raise the issue of public private partnerships, PPP. I may have to ask the Comptroller and Auditor General to help me on this issue also. I am a little confused by a footnote in his report. It refers to future commitments in respect of public private partnerships which are estimated at about €4 billion as follows: €1 billion for education, €500 million for court services; €658 million for the OPW; almost €1.7 billion for national roads; and a small amount for environment projects. The footnote indicates that the amounts shown for projects sanctioned by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government such as water services reflect the upfront payments, but they do not include expenditure under the contracts by the relevant local authority or the outstanding commitments that have to be met by the local authorities from their own budgets. The report produced by the Comptroller and Auditor General outlines the commitments up to a figure of €4 billion and everybody reading the report will take it at face value. I look at the amounts for outstanding commitments in all of the Departments I have just mentioned and the ballpark figure is that €2.5 billion has been paid, but there are outstanding commitments of €4.5 billion. In rough terms, there is almost twice as much outstanding in the next 20 to 30 years as has been paid to date, but when we look at the figure the Comptroller and Auditor General has supplied and because he is not the local government auditor, he has shown that €594 million has been committed for water services. That leads me to believe the relevant local authorities have at least €1 billion of future commitments. I am quite sure of this because I know from my own local authority the scale of what is involved which is included in the projects list. This is definitely a figure of €1 billion of commitments in public private partnerships that is not reflected in the figure of €4 billion included in the Comptroller and Auditor General's accounts. Some effort must be made by the Secretary General or the Comptroller and Auditor General to give the committee a proper report by getting the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to get the figures from local authorities. It would have been helpful to have had the round figure. The figure should be closer to €5.5 billion. Does Mr. Watt know what I am trying to highlight?