Mr. Ronnie Downes:

The NDP was introduced, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, in early 2018 and is to run until 2027. It was always envisaged that it would be subject to a mid-term review in 2022. As a part of the programme for Government, the review of the NDP was brought forward and that is why we are doing it this year. We will be publishing it shortly, as soon as it is ready.

We do not want to spend all our time reviewing and re-reviewing something we have already reviewed. We need to move on to implementation and we are keen to do that. We are going to set the capital expenditure ceilings for each Department for a five-year period and then set national strategic objectives with resourcing for the ten-year period ahead. We will then enter the cycle of implementation and oversight. There is a review in the sense that we will have discussions with each of the Departments every year to see whether they have used their allocations correctly, whether they have used it all and how they might achieve their objectives. Returning to the discussion I had earlier with Deputy Boyd Barrett, we are interested in developing the performance focus and getting more of a sense of the outcomes and public service impacts of capital expenditure. There is also an important role for the members of the committee in holding Departments to account for the money they have spent and assessing whether they have achieved their objectives. There is an ongoing cycle of reporting, oversight and accountability. Once this NDP review is completed and we have a revised and refreshed NDP in place later this year, it will be a few years before we come back to review and reset it once again.