Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests from PwC. With regard to the cost, Ms Ball referred in her opening statement to the fact that the benefit should be 1.3 of the cost. We now learn the overall cost of the project is approximately €5 billion, according to what the Department and Ministers have been telling us in the past few weeks. It is €2.95 billion in subsidy and €2 billion on top of that. On Ms Ball's analysis that would appear to fall a long way short of the 1.3. It would show that it is not even reaching break even. When she was going through the different benefits, she used the word "assumed" in respect of each. She said that PwC assumed in each of the areas it examined. I have a concern about that. How firm is all of that?

With regard to the CBA, a number of senior departmental officials expressed concerns that the PwC report had a series of flaws and inaccurate financial information. For example, the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform sent a letter to the Minister in which he said that it is flawed and that the project does not represent value for money on any rigorous or objective basis. We then found out, through a further letter from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to the Minister, that the value for money assessment consistently overestimated the cost to the private operator by €1 billion. That error was only discovered last April. Will Ms Ball comment on those two issues? The official went on to question whether the CBA was in any way consistent with the public spending code.