Mr. Kevin Meaney:

I will try to respond. On the first question, we are cognisant of the cuts, in particular the costs of delay and having that kind of bureaucratic delay in the process. That was the driver of the reforms that we were trying to introduce. We do sit at a higher level and are not directly involved in project delivery, which is delivered by agencies, so we were relying on the sectors and agencies themselves to come to us with the issues around the process of getting approval through what was the old public spending code and now the infrastructural guidelines. That challenge and some of the delays we are facing were the reason we first took a look to see what we could do. We are making the changes to reduce some of the burden relating to the steps that are required. Agencies are very cognisant of development costs that are required before they even get to construction. Outside of our processes, there might be wider processes around the planning system such as, for example, environmental checks that are requirements for planning approval. In the context of the gateways of approval within each of the sectors, our guidelines probably do sit at a higher level. In terms of the intention behind our guidelines, proportionality was a key consideration when we were setting them out. That is why we have introduced the thresholds.

Where we have the full rigour and the full checks and external assurance processes, it is for those large-scale projects that are over €200 million. The reason is that they come with a lot of added risk and if the work is not done to a sufficient standard early before tendering or going into contract, there is a huge risk that costs will materialise afterwards where potentially they are more costly. There is a new threshold of €20 million for projects that are smaller and require the least oversight in terms of the guidelines. There are fewer steps for projects under €20 million, but there are some. We try to ensure value for money and rigour, but they do not have to go through the same level of external checks or go all the way up to the Government at those kinds of stages. There is proportionality built into the guidelines. We do not want to unnecessarily delay projects that have less of a risk and that could go ahead in a more timely manner.