Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

Yes, this is a crucial issue. Our view is that we have put an arbitrary constraint on the level of public private partnerships we can have in any public capital programme or in any commitment to the State. That decision at that time was partially influenced by growing uncertainty in terms of off-balance sheet and on-balance sheet assessment coming through EUROSTAT and the wider European Commission framework. Some additional clarity has been brought to those rules in the past year but I think there was a wider policy decision as to what degree of public private partnerships we were willing to take on. There is resistance in the Government to taking on more public private partnerships and as a result of that resistance we are missing significant opportunities in terms of the capital that is available.

We will not be able to deliver these infrastructural needs without the use of private money. That is the reality of the challenge we face. We have placed an arbitrary cap in the capital plan on PPPs which we think is no longer relevant and should be reviewed. We would greatly appreciate the support of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in doing that. I would be very happy to come back with more detail at a future date if that was something the committee wanted to go into in greater depth.