Professor Eoin Reeves:

Exactly. In turn, we do not have access to any of the data because that is the way much of this happens. This is one of the big problems with infrastructural policy. By and large, it is problematic because these details tend to be hidden. Why are they hidden? It is a good question. My suspicion is because people do not want to be accountable for decisions that they make. I am glad I made that point.

Going back to the Deputy's point, how does one put numbers on that? This is the art of cost-benefit analysis. It is most inexact because there is much educated guess work. My knowledge of the analysis that was undertaken by PwC was that it was heavily invested in by PwC. PwC would have relied on many previous studies, for instance, in order to come up with a number for something like the value that one could attach to remote working. There is an established body of work around how to put numbers on time and cost savings and I would have a degree of faith in the rigour of the analysis up to that point.

The important point is, because it is imprecise, the key then would be to have it scrutinised by an independent agency of some sort. That is why I mention the fact that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, DPER, scrutinised the cost benefit analysis, CBA. As a result of that, many adjustments were made. They identified, for instance, how sensitive the ultimate result of the CBA was to certain assumptions. For me, it highlighted the fact that one can never get this right. One can never get it nailed-on perfectly.