Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This has been a very interesting and useful discussion but I believe there are gaps there. We are right to ask about the profits which are being made. We have to ensure value for money and to continuously weigh up policy against what we are delivering. I am not a supporter of PPPs unless there is a particular expertise or advancement in technology, which is something we are trying to get at there. I certainly do not think that it should be a default position or policy in how we deliver and procure. I would very much like to see more aggregate information as to how measurements are done to ensure we are getting value for money. We cannot have the people who have made the decisions policing their own decisions in how they are evaluating this. There needs to be an evaluation and that evaluation should be done by the Department, NDP Delivery and Reform. We always talk about the expertise and building that up within that Department of public expenditure in order that it can make these assessments rather than the assessments being contracted out to consultants who get paid a whole lot of money to do that. It fits into what we are trying to achieve here overall. I look forward to more evaluations and to the information that that our witnesses will submit to the committee. When we get that information and analyse it, we may have a further session.