Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials and thank him for his opening statement on January's ECOFIN meeting and the ECOFIN plan for next week. Tomorrow's emergency Eurogroup meeting sounds much more exciting, but I guess we are not allowed to ask about that. We will start with ECOFIN, in any event.

On the investment plan for Europe, which was dealt with in January and is on the agenda again for next week's meeting, in an Irish context, the overall figure of €315 billion sounds very impressive. Much of this will come from the private sector and will be leveraged over a period of time. We have submitted a list of possible projects. Will the Minister give the committee an indication of when he would expect this fund to be up and running and investments to start flowing to Ireland from it?