Mr. Ed Hearne:

There are a couple of sources for that information. It was a key finding of the IMF when it looked at our capital planning system a number of years ago. In 2017, it carried out a wide-ranging assessment of how we budget for investment, how we allocate it and how we monitor implementation. One of the key findings was that, centrally, we did not have a good view of what the overall capital programme looked like in its totality. While individual Departments were monitoring their own investment programmes, there was no consolidated central view.

In response to that, we set about a number of initiatives. Probably the most useful has been the Government's capital project tracker, which started life as a simple list of projects but which has developed to include much more detailed information, much of which is published. Not all of it is published for reasons of commercial confidentiality and other reasons. That sets out the budgetary scale of projects, their likely commencement date, their current stage in the project life cycle and the likely completion date. We have updated that approximately every six months since it started in 2018. That covers the largest projects in the State.

We then have the interactive Project Ireland 2040 map which sets out much smaller-scale investments including community investments and investments by local authorities. That is an interactive map whereby members of the public can look at their area and at the type of projects that are coming. It does not have the same level of information as is available for the larger projects but we plan to develop it further.

The Deputy mentioned the construction sector. We work very closely with the construction sector and the various representative bodies through the construction sector group. We know that this has been a useful tool for them in foreseeing the likely pipeline of work in the medium term. Those in the sector have given us feedback suggesting that more granular information needs to be made available in that regard. That is certainly something we plan to continue to develop over the medium term.

Those are the two principal sources. On individual large projects, Government Departments will publish particular project-level information separately. Any of the major transport, road and energy projects will have its own dedicated website operated by the individual agencies responsible for it. There are a number of sources of information, the capital tracker being the principal central source.