Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Our main reason was the effect it was going to have on our ability to spend, both in terms of capital and current spending. We described it with a catchphrase, "neoliberal straitjacket". Some of the people who are now rightly complaining supported this neoliberal straitjacket. We need to ramp up infrastructure investment in a whole range of areas.

Are CIF members the best people to carry through an investment programme? I ask for a number of reasons, including cost overruns and public-private partnerships. There is a scandalous history of cost overruns in public-private partnerships. It is a history of projects being tendered at one price but consistently coming in well over the original estimate. The Luas cost much more than we were originally told it would cost.