Professor Eoin Reeves:

It is quite hard to work that out. Given that such a small amount of equity - €220 million, or less than 1% of the overall project costs - will be provided, the rest of it will be financed by the Exchequer. In that regard, it will not suffer from the cost disadvantage that would previously have applied in the case of PPPs, where they were entirely privately financed, usually at a equity-to-debt ratio of 1:9. Those PPPs probably had a higher cost.

As I outlined, the concern is that the degree of equity is so low that it will pull the rug from under the mechanisms that should drive the advantages of a PPP model, such as a gap funding model. Developers just do not have enough skin in the game.