Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. The Deputy is spot-on. We have to ensure that we invest through the cycle in the future, and that we get away from the peaks and troughs, feast or famine approach. The Deputy is right. People who are deciding on careers and on where they want to base themselves into the future need to have an assurance that there will be a sustained level of public capital investment over the years ahead. What we are broadly looking at is that as part of the overall fund structure, there will be a public investment fund which will have certain access criteria. However, the event of a downturn or a shock, where the Exchequer might otherwise be looking to cut capital expenditure, it will be able to avoid that by having access to resources in that scenario. The Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and I, and his officials and mine, who have a lot of expertise in managing public spending on capital infrastructure, are developing and scoping that idea in conjunction with the party leaders at this point in time.