Ms Cathy Bryce:

There is quite a number of questions there. I will try to cover as many as possible. The Deputies have made very fair comments about the PPPs and timelines. I would say that, because applying PPPs to social housing was new, the local authorities, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and ourselves had to spend a lot of time trying to really specify what we were looking for the private sector to do. That collaboration has been very positive but it was time consuming.

I believe that some efficiencies can be obtained in bundle 3. I will not pretend that bundle 3 will be a quick process because a lot of time is required for the design, planning and procurement and there is not much one can do to shorten those timelines. Bundles 1 and 2 have been longer because, in both cases, we were working with different local authorities. Bundle 2 is being managed by Cork County Council and bundle 1 by Dublin City Council so it was new for all of those local authorities.

The collaboration has been very helpful and one of the benefits that PPP provides is that it encourages the parties from the service element and construction element to get together upfront to try to work at designing good schemes. That is perhaps something that does not happen with the slightly more disjointed building upfront and then servicing in some of the other channels.

There is a very rigid and detailed process that we go through in relation to the public sector benchmark and these are all following the guidelines as laid down by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. First of all, there is an independent cost assessor who costs out the full construction cost and service element of the scheme. Those costs are reviewed in conjunction with the National Development Finance Agency, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and members of each of the local authorities were involved in assessing those costs. They are done upfront, so they are not done in retrospect after bids are received. One of the most important things is that there is competition in the bidding and that is essential and there was good competitive tension between three very well thought-out bids in social housing 1 and four now happening in social housing 2.

The winning bid is compared with the public sector benchmark and I am, unfortunately, not able to give a cost per unit because we are in a live procurement. I am not able to give you the public sector benchmark now, but it will be published. I am able to confirm that the preferred tender did come in below the public sector benchmark.

The NDFA would like to speak to the experience of PPPs in this country across education, transport, justice and health cohorts more recently. First of all, procuring any infrastructure has challenges. There is nothing easy in trying to do large-scale infrastructure and I think we would see, both across traditional procurement and PPPs, issues arise, for example in relation to Carillion and the default there. The construction sector is a risky one, it is fair to say. In terms of the overall experience as to whether risk has been transferred, we have pretty good experience of risk being successfully transferred and that really gives us confidence to believe it will work for the social housing schemes.

There is no one channel that is perfect. Every channel of delivery, as I see it, has its pros and cons. The land initiatives have pros and cons. PPPs have pros and cons and issues can emerge even for the local authorities doing these projects by themselves.

To address Deputy Boyd Barrett's questions about risk and sharing, there is only one risk and the question is who bears it. With PPPs, we work hard to try to make the private sector take as much of the risk as possible. There is no demand risk in PPP schemes for social housing so that is taken out of the picture. These are all social houses on social land to stay within the remit of the State and for the State to have full control over who goes into those homes.

That is understood upfront. There is no demand risk being transferred or shared and no pricing for that. The risk that is borne by the private sector is the risk of construction and construction cost overruns. In today's market that is quite significant, in particular with rising inflation in the construction sector. The private sector also takes the risk of being able to maintain the houses over the 25 years, manage them appropriately, and to hand them back in a suitable condition. They cost that risk and they bid on it and that is what we assess against the public sector benchmark. I hope I have answered some of the questions.