Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are four value for money tests for public private partnerships and the associated benchmarks that are applied as the PPP projects are progressed, including a parallel public sector benchmark. The tests set out to see whether the project could be delivered more cheaply through traditional means. All these benchmarks and value for money measures will be made public after the contracts are awarded.

A significant amount of work has been done with the enhanced lease agreement by the National Development Finance Agency. When we go into the final lease agreement with the people who are successful with the expression of interests, we will then carry out another value for money exercise to ensure that it all stacks up and amounts to another delivery stream that brings value for money to the taxpayer in addition to the more traditional streams. That work will be done when we go into the final agreement. The NDFA has done the pre-proofing, as it were, of the fundamental principles behind the scheme and how it will operate.