Mr. Derek Tierney:

There are two vantage points. We have committed to providing Deputy Devlin with a note on how the recommendations are applied in this project. In a wider sense, the public spending code has been revised whereby two independent assurance steps are asked for at the outset so any business case worth over €200 million will be put through independent evaluation. This is something every Department needs to do. There is a second step whereby every project, after external evaluation, needs to go through a major projects advisory group step, controlled by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. That is all about giving assurance to the taxpayer, the Government, sponsoring Departments and approving authorities on the viability, credibility and assurance behind the proposal. Yes, lessons have been learned as a consequence of the process that have been applied at a macro level to the public spending code, and there are direct lessons transferable from this project to the thinking around how we plan for the next project.