Mr. John McCarthy:

As the Deputy says, a number of issues have given rise to delay and cost factors. When the city manager appeared before the joint committee in January, he outlined some of those factors. He also indicated to the committee at that time that, assuming a favourable outcome to the remaining issues which needed to be addressed, including the issue of engagements with the European Commission, there was an expectation that the bulk of the expenditure that had been incurred would be recovered. He has also undertaken to engage with, and seek the views of, the elected members of Dublin City Council. Likewise, the other CEOs will be engaging with their elected members before a final decision is made.

If one looks at the scale of expenditure involved, when the city manager appeared before the committee in January, he cited a figure of €96.3 million. That expenditure was over a period of more than ten years. If, for argument's sake, we say it was ten years, one is talking about €10 million per annum. While it is critically important that sort of expenditure, or any expenditure, is undertaken in a value for money way, from the Department's point of view the issue is the extent to which that level of expenditure would be of a compromising nature in terms of the financial stability of the four authorities. At an average expenditure of about €10 million per annum, compared with a combined annual revenue budget for the four Dublin authorities of about €1.4 billion, it would not be significant in the sense of threatening the financial stability of the four Dublin authorities.