Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Yes, they do. On a general point, Danny McCoy, the head of IBEC, made a speech a year and a half ago, which was seminal, but perhaps not noticed so much because it was given just before the election. He said, while our State has grown dramatically and has been hugely successful in employment and economic development, one of our difficulties of that was that the size of our State has not risen commensurate to it. There are areas with underspends or inability to deliver in a timely manner and it is often the case that we need the resources in our Departments and agencies and that the public service and its agencies need that capability. I said in advance of last year's budget, and as I will probably say tomorrow in negotiations with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, that we need current investment in our State capabilities to help deliver the infrastructure. We are probably the largest capital spending Department along with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. We need the current resources to help deliver that.