Mr. Paddy Howard:

I should first explain that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is responsible for the development of the public private partnership policy framework. In that regard, an interdepartmental group was established in 2017, which comprised Departments and agencies with experience of using public private partnership to deliver capital infrastructure, to review that experience and report to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform with recommendations on the future role of PPPs in the context of the new ten-year national development plan. The key findings and recommendations of the review have already been published in the national development plan, NDP, and a copy of the relevant section has been circulated and was appended to our Secretary General's response of 23 July. To give a quick update on the current position. Since the Secretary General's letter was circulated, the Department published the full review on our website yesterday evening. As such, the analysis that informs the conclusions included in the NDP is now available.

The main outcomes of the review can be summarised as follows. PPPs should continue to feature as the procurement option available to the Government for projects which demonstrate value for money over a traditional procurement option. Value for money should be the deciding factor, which is an approach recommended by both the International Monetary Fund, IMF, public investment management assessment on Ireland and the PPP review we conducted ourselves.

This arrangement will apply to all new PPPs but will not affect PPPs which have already been announced and are in planning and procurement, that is, those projects that are being pursued under phases 2 and 3 announced in budgets 2015 and 2016, respectively. Post-project reviews, which were undertaken for all PPPs, will be published. This recommendation has already been implemented by Circular 06/18 of 26 March issued by the Department. Consideration is also being given to the development of a new alternative PPP model to complement the existing model. Such an option could comprise a less complex and shorter-term alternative PPP-type contractual arrangement that could facilitate greater competitive tension in the procurement process, as it would open the PPP market to smaller domestic contractors.

Regarding Carrillion, the main priority now is to resolve the operational issues and ensure the relevant schools are brought into operation as soon as possible. Responsibility for those operational issues rests with the Department of Educational and Skills and the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA. Clearly, if points emerge from the policy framework in that process, they will be addressed in due course. Consequently, the NDFA will take the lead in this engagement.