Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for taking the time for these questions. I have questions under three or four categories. The first relates to infrastructure. Are any infrastructural projects being delayed or deprioritised purely because of financing? I have seen figures suggesting that we need about €200 billion in infrastructural investment between now and 2035, which is ten years. It seems like a low figure to me. I am excluding housing from this and talking about general infrastructure. Even today, we see reports of Uisce Éireann needing €10 billion. The consensus about the current state of our infrastructure is that we have much catching up to do. In order to do that, given the low debt to GDP ratio, with the debt to GNI ratio being about 65%, which is 22% below the European average, we would seem to have headroom to borrow for infrastructural development. Given that infrastructural investment tends to bring a positive report and given that we have a low debt to GNI ratio, it would make a lot of sense to front-load much of that investment. Is the Minister able to comment on that?