Mr. Michael Kennedy:

As I stated earlier, we have done ten post-project reviews. We listed a summary of the findings in the report and as Mr. Nolan has said, they will be published in the near future. One of the big lessons we learned was that forecasting traffic in a toll demand scenario was very difficult. As Deputy Burke mentioned, there was significant risk and much of it was carried by the private sector. There are two schemes with a floor on the exposure of the private sector but it means they are hovering at a low level in terms of where they thought they might be with traffic. For the other six toll concession schemes out there, they carried all the risk. As the Comptroller and Auditor General has said, the reviews we undertook were for the procurement and statutory approval processes, as well as how it was done and the out-turn and timing of processes. In a number of cases, it was recommended, given that traffic had not been as expected, that additional cost-benefit analyses should be done. These were done in two cases and there is another we ought to do. We will do that. In all cases, it found that processes were satisfactory and the decision to procure via PPP was correct. The cost-benefit outturns proved that the roads continued to represent value for money for the State.