Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

I will answer that question, but can I start by talking about the public sector benchmarks that we have? We were the first ones to publish the information and we have also now made available the three benchmark reports. There is substantial information to make judgments on value for money within those, if the committee wished to look at those in detail. We collectively decided that it was a good thing to do to make those publicly available from the point of view of transparency.

We have a number of different areas to look at to make sure that we are getting value for money and to learn as we are going. Particularly, the contract management is one, but also the NDFA referred to the review it puts in place after a contract is signed. We have learned significant lessons and changed approaches significantly as a result of those steps, not just in PPPs but in school buildings and other education sector buildings. For example, in one of the initial PPPs, in order to reduce wear and tear corridors were widened by the PPP company itself at its own cost. We adopted that as a Department standard.