Mr. Cormac O'Rourke:

I will look into the matter and revert to the Deputy on it.

I am not aware of the statistic that Ireland is the second worst in terms of expenditure on infrastructure. I am aware, however, that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been critical of our level of expenditure on infrastructure. It is tricky for someone such as me to comment on these matters because, under the Roads Acts, I am precluded from criticising policy, while also being required to provide advice for the Government, the Department and the joint committee. No one has ever provided any guidance on how to deal with these conflicting instructions. The best I have managed, where policy is concerned, has been to try to put independent reputable research, where it is available, in the public domain. Members should be aware, however, that I am precluded from criticising or commenting on policy.

In terms of an update on the provision of service stations, we continue to spend €20,000 per month in securing the half-built stations, but I do not expect this to continue for a period of 12 months as we are in active discussions with the winning bidder. As members will be aware, we were held up by a court case which was eventually withdrawn. We hope we will be able to start construction in the next few months.

To respond to Deputy Imelda Munster, public private partnerships are complicated. The issue is that it is clearly more expensive to fund a project through a public private partnership. Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice asked what was the relative cost. Our most recent refinancing - the figure is in the public domain - shows that we refinanced the M17-M18 project at a rate of about 2.5% over 27 years. The comparable Government gilt rate at the time was approximately 1.5%. This means that there was an extra cost of 1%.