Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Yes, but it is better than negative growth. On investment, like Ireland, Europe experienced a crisis but its impact was uneven across the Continent. It impacted more strongly on one set of countries than others. As a general observation, Europe is underinvested in infrastructure. Ireland is underinvested, in my view, in both social and economic infrastructure. In terms of economic infrastructure we need to work on completion of the roads programme, investment in the ports, airports and broadband and investment in social infrastructure in terms of refurbishment of schools, including prefab replacement, health centres and so on.

The capital programme announced in 2015, which relates to spend up to 2022, is €42 billion, but that includes the public capital programme from the Exchequer and the investment intentions and policies of the commercial State bodies. We know from experiences over the past year that more resources will be required for the public capital programme. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has announced that he will revise upward the public capital programme and I understand he will do that in the first half of this year, although I am not sure of the date. Although I do not think he will be nominating projects, he has notified Departments that additional resources will be made available and projects will be prioritised. The Minister proposes to make the announcement in this regard some time in the course of this year. As I said, I do not know the timeline.

In regard to Europe, the rules continue to be the rules but we argue for flexibility on all occasions. As the Deputy will be aware, Mr. Andrew McDowell is now vice president of the European Investment Bank. I am an ex officiogovernor of the European Investment Bank. I am working with Mr. McDowell to see if we can get additional resources for a public capital programme. Mr. McDowell is also working with EUROSTAT on whether we can finance off-balance sheet. The Deputy will be aware from public private partnerships that the key test will be around transfer of the risk. Transferring the risk means transfer of the financial liability to the entity that is building the road, school and so on. We have just started this initiative but we have already discovered that we can expect the EIB to look favourably on projects that generate an income stream. For example, if we proposed to undertake a project in the public transport arena which resulted in the fares accruing from that being sufficient to service the loan, we could get it off-balance sheet. There are other projects of a similar nature.