Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think that is enough. It is not enough to give a big pile of money to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage or the Department of Transport and to fail to have an oversight mechanism for the State to ensure those Departments are actually being tested externally in some way to ensure those projects are delivered. The sense one has is there is an awful lot of money in the State but things are not happening and not getting delivered.

I will give a different example with the local authorities. It is a continual source of frustration in this room that the Comptroller and Auditor General is not able to audit their accounts. They received, I think, €5.8 billion funding and we have no capacity to test how that is being spent on the delivery of capital projects, whatever about the management of the housing assistance payment or anything else. The authorities essentially audit themselves and the Comptroller and Auditor General can only go so far.

My question is really about Mr. Moloney's Department's capacity as the ultimate overseer on behalf of the State to technically and expertly probe the management of different projects without having to resort to your KPMGs, your Deloittes or anything else. Does Mr. Moloney's Department just give the others money and wait for them to come back at the end of the year when each either has a return or it does not? How can the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform be sure the projects are being A, delivered, B, delivered efficiently, C with the best value for money and that whatever is being learned - because there is always something to be learned on any engineering project - is being captured by the State system for the following capital projects? Where is the Department's expertise on that, or does it just pass on the money?