Professor John McHale:

The Deputy has more or less answered the question himself, in the sense that the more capacity that one has, the more knowledge of costings that one has, the better position one will be to push back so that if one gets an answer that this cannot be costed or one may have questions on the way it has been costed, if one has that capacity, one will be in a better position to interrogate what is coming back in terms of those costings. This could be with a model where, for the most part, it is a validation exercise where the more detailed work is being done at departmental level but to play that validation exercise and where necessary go beyond it, one needs a certain level of capacity and that requires resources.