Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

Looking at our budgets at present from private delivery versus Government delivery of projects and the overruns, and I have asked this in the other two committee meetings, I am a business person myself, so it is design and delivery. You design it, you deliver it, you get an extra percentage because you take the risk but you are getting value for your buck. It is delivered on time and, if there is an overrun, it goes back to the contractor that there is an overrun. We are looking at other infrastructural projects that we could get in on time but we have to bring in that type of a model to make sure we have design delivery because it brings in accountability to make sure that we get more value for our buck, but we also get delivery on budget and on time, which makes it a lot easier for the likes of the Departments to say that they have X amount to spend and they can get X amount.

I mentioned the children's hospital before and the overruns. If you look at the likes of UHL, it is building on a 96-bed unit. It is a box. You could put a box alongside a box, you know exactly what it is going to cost, and you have a design and delivery project, which, for governance, shows you that there is accountability, it is value for money, and we get it done and done faster. The same applies for housing infrastructure where we have the likes of Irish Water. Again, it is design and delivery. All the projects I have been involved in with them up along the line have not been coming in on budget and on time. They are actually robbing Peter to pay Paul to try to finish this project and it is to try and get it delivered, whereas when we had the local authorities in there, they had no other choice but to go out to delivery and they got it delivered. Then the likes of Irish Water can take it over because it is delivered.

We have to change away from the model trajectory we are going. We need design delivery, on budget and on time. That means that the taxes being paid are being spent responsibly and we are getting the infrastructure in place so that housing demand will be shortened. If that type of a model is put in place, that means we get more delivery on time and we make sure we can meet our housing targets. Companies coming in here want to bring in people and for them to be housed, but unless we deliver something like that, we are never going to meet the challenges that are there.