Mr. Kevin Meaney:

Just in terms of the broad contracts, there is an office within the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, but it is not our area, it is the Office of Government Procurement that oversees the public works contracts. It does have a Government contracts committee at which , where the nature of projects is discussed and the appropriate contract that could be used. The default contract is the public works contract that the Government approved, but there have been derogations where required to use an alternative type of contract if the agency that is delivering it seeks that derogation and thinks it is a better type of contract. That, however, does not include PPPs. The direction of PPPs tends to come from the agency that is seeking to deliver an infrastructure project. For many reasons, it sets out a case that a public private partnership is the route it wishes to go down. Tests are applied. There is a separate set of guidelines on PPPs. There is a value-for-money test, and that is the key criteria by which they are assessed, but an agency might put it forward.

We have technical advisers within the National Development Finance Agency who help directly with the agency or the sector that wants to deliver the PPP product. Within the PPP contract, in particular given the nature of the type of works and the fact that the PPP company will be operating and maintaining the building for 25 years afterwards, the construction component of those contracts involves a very big fixed-price agreement and those involved, both the State and the contractor, seek a lot of certainty at the construction stage. It does push the need, before we get to the contract stage, to ensure that designs are as complete as possible and checked three times to make sure before the contract is signed that it includes all the needs that are required within the piece of infrastructure because, as Deputy Canney says, it can be challenging to make changes after the event.