Mr. Garret Doocey:

From my end, before I hand over to Mr. Creegan, for a multi-million euro project like MetroLink, irrespective of the jurisdiction it is developed in, a hugely significant amount of money will be spent before shovels do get into the ground, to use the Deputy's terminology. I am not saying that the amount of money that is spent in Ireland is directly equivalent to the amount of money that is spent in other jurisdictions, but a significant proportion of a multi-billion euro project in the modern era, in a democracy such as our own, will be spent on the pre-planning processes. There are differences, which the Deputy is right to highlight, between common law jurisdictions such as ours and civil law jurisdictions such as Spain. There are notable differences in some elements of those processes which lead to reduced costs, but there is always a significant cost in the planning process for a multi-billion euro project. I would not diminish that.