Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I understand that. There has, however, been a little bit of a myth that has been going around here today that these became popular during the recession when the State encouraged this type of finance. I do not believe this is the case. These projects were in their height in the good times before the recession. When the recession came along many of the projects that had been in the pipeline stopped. This is the exact opposite to what some people have said at the committee today. The Clonee project for example started in 2010. That contract would have been made three years earlier. The Limerick project and the M50 were also in 2010. This means that all those contracts were signed in 2007. The Kilcock-Kinnegad contract was signed around 2002, the Dundalk contract would have been signed in 2002, the Fermoy project signed in 2003, the Waterford project was signed in 2006, the Galway-Ballinasloe M6 project was signed around 2006, the M7 and M8 in Portlaoise was signed around 2006-2007, and the motorway services project was signed around 2007. It has been said a few times in this committee that most of these projects were going when the State was not able to access finance and that they were good for employment and so on. This is not the case at all. The projects actually ground to a halt then. I recall some of the decentralisation programmes under PPP, one of which was three big Government offies in Carlow, Mullingar and Portlaoise. These went to final stage in the process. The contractor had spent millions of euro as the preferred bidder but the project was pulled at the end. This is an example of the risks borne by bidders in competitions. I have asked if that person was paid. That instance was offices for the Government so it was probably an OPW project. My point is that these projects collapsed during the recession and they are now picking up again. They were not countercyclical. They were very much it.