Ms Geraldine Tallon:

The Letterkenny plant was 6.5%, higher than the public service benchmark. For capital purposes, it was 3.5% less than the public service benchmark on whole-life cost. The capital cost for the Barrow extraction plant was 20.4% less than traditional procurement and the whole-life cost was 21.3% less than the public service benchmark. A number of the plants involved in DBO do not have a public service benchmark because they predate the public-private partnership, terms. These are compared against a pre-tender estimate.

The DBO capital cost of the Dublin Bay treatment plant was 15% less than traditional procurement while the whole-life cost was 18.8% less than the pre-tender estimate. The DBO capital cost of the Wexford treatment plant was 6% more than the pre-tender estimate. I do not have a whole-life cost figure available for this plant. For the Cork treatment plant, the DBO and the whole-life cost was equal to the pre-tender estimate. Again, it predates the public sector benchmark requirement.