Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I ask Mr. O'Kelly to revert to PPPs for a moment. I outlined the situation with the convention centre. As I understand it, the total cost to the State for it was €416 million. That was just the State's contribution. There was a partnership with the Spencer Dock Development Company. The total cost to the State hit €416 million, but the assessment afterwards was that it could have been built at a total cost of €200 million. I mentioned the Limerick tunnel, the bill for which could run into hundreds of millions of euro as it was underused during the Covid period. It will be similar for other motorways. Another PPP that has been of interest over the past couple of years is the schools bundle. Mr. O'Kelly said that the NTMA does not have a direct role in transport, but I am highlighting PPPs in general. While there is a case to be argued for them, I am trying to highlight they also have major risks.

The PPPs for schools ran to 13% more than if they were constructed using direct billing. We also finished up in a situation where private companies are not supervised on site. The committee dealt with this last year. There was a more than €40 million cost for retrofitting those buildings. As I understand it, the taxpayer took those hits. That is substantial. The broadband plan, which is not a PPP in name, and I followed this closely in the previous Dáil because I had a responsibility as Opposition spokesperson on it, was done under what is called a gap model, but it is PPP. We are giving between €2.7 billion and €2.8 billion to a private company, an American entity, to do the broadband plan. Everyone's understanding was that the private entity would come up with 50%, or 30% to 40%, of the cost. It turns out the private entity is coming up with a figure, in comparison with the cost to the State and taxpayer, of approximately 10% to 11% of the cost, which is somewhere in the region of €270 million to €280 million.

The taxpayer is taking all the risk with all those projects. Irish Water has taken over liability on design build operate, DBO, projects from local authorities that are in the region of €1.4 billion and there is an annual cost of servicing. That is just a snapshot of some of them. The point I am making is that while a public private partnership may not always be 50%, when the final figure for the national broadband plan came out it was just jaw-dropping. I followed that very closely, as did others on this committee, in the various roles we had in the Thirty-second Dáil. We will finish up in a situation at the end of that project, where we will have broadband in rural areas that were not being serviced, not to mention all the other unusual aspects of it, but the cost will be enormous. Does Mr. O'Kelly agree that the taxpayers' liability is enormous?