Mr. Andrew McDowell:

It is a matter for EUROSTAT but generally PPPs are off the balance sheet. They have to be judged case by case. We can also lend directly to the sovereign, which we do frequently through the NTMA.

The NTMA identified projects for us on an annual basis for which it would like EIB financing. The third area that we can support is commercial semi-State utilities, which generally are also classified by EUROSTAT and the CSO as private sector bodies from the perspective of Government statistics. Even though most of them are fully owned by the taxpayer, because most of their revenues are generated through commercial charges, their statistical classification is as private bodies so our financing for utilities is off the Government's balance sheet.

I will go through each of these areas. We have done about ten PPP transactions in Ireland over the past nine years. We regard Ireland as probably one of the most sophisticated countries in terms of PPP project development in terms of the institutional capacity here. The NDFA is really at the cutting edge in terms of institutional capacity. We certainly regard Ireland as a very reliable partner, to the extent where I am happy to say we would do a lot more financing of PPPs in Ireland were they available in the capital programme. That is a message we have conveyed to the authorities here, that in the context of the revised capital programme if there was a political consensus or decision that, on top of traditional direct Exchequer financing of infrastructure, there was a willingness to do more PPPs, depending on the details, we would be happy to be the main financing partner.