Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I did not suggest that. What I am suggesting is that the Department would use everybody else's expertise but that it would put in side funding. I will give an example. We had a scheme going where the county councils put in new wastewater systems. We went fifty-fifty, but we had no technical input and we left that to the parent Department. The scheme was under the group water schemes, as they were known at the time, and I think it was called the community connection scheme or something like that. Basically, we topped up the grant from the Department of housing and environment at the time, and we made sure the householder did not have to pay more than €1,200 for a water connection. However, we did not have any involvement, as a Department, when those schemes were going to the other Department, and no involvement in the technical specification as that was for the county council and the other Department. It was the same with health facilities. Everything was done on the basis that the parent Department was left with the technical job and what we had to do was provide the money. It was done and there was no problem doing it.

Mr. Nicholson can check out the models that were operating from 2000 to 2010 and he will see that there was very little technical work. For example, with ESB, we provided a 100% grant for business networks to change from single phase to three phase. It was a very successful programme and, of course, it made the lines more resilient because they were all upgraded at the time, which was very effective. It has been done. The model is there. Perhaps we could have a fuller discussion on this. The Department can check the models that were operating and we can then come back and have a discussion on this.