Professor Eoin Reeves:

No, we have not examined it in detail, for the reason the Deputy outlined, namely, that we simply do not have the information. It is fair to say we have been told, and provided with a specimen contract to the effect that if the revenues are higher than projected, there will be a clawback. In that sense, the developer takes on risk but it also takes on the downside risk. If the revenues do not accrue, the developer will be penalised within the contract on that basis, which is important.

Nevertheless, we need to take into account a few general aspects of risk, of which there is a great deal. At the initial stages, I assume that the developer ran risk workshops to identify at least ten or 20 risks, worked out the probabilities of them occurring and placed values on them. We mentioned construction operating revenue but there are other risks. An important factor in risk transfer is that it is central to the value-for-money argument in favour of PPP. What is in the contract is not necessarily what materialises when the contract is up and running and managed. An interesting lesson emerged from the schools PPPs, where it was identified that in the first three years of the schools' running, the management of the contracts were such that they were not really up to scratch and risk transfer was not imposed in reality, that is, with penalties imposed for poor performance and so on.

That brings us to the question of how the contracts will be governed. In the case of schools' PPPs, the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA, took over the management of the contracts. I am curious about where the NDFA has been in respect of broadband. It is a specialist PPP procurement agency. The PPPs that have caused the most problems in the country are those that were not procured by the NDFA but rather by individual Departments, such as that of Department of Education and Skills in the case of the schools projects. The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment procured the incinerator project and, now, the national broadband plan. The question is where the NDFA is. I acknowledge that it played an advisory role but in the overall governance plans for what happened in respect of appraisal and so on, it is a question that needs to be asked and should certainly be addressed.