Mr. Paul Reid:

We have been working on the capital plan since early this year and we have been working with the Department of Health on the terms of its publication. The Deputy will be familiar with some of the issues that have emerged with the national children’s hospital and the required extra funding of €100 million, which we have had to work through over the past several weeks. This had direct implications for the capital plan where initially a €25 million contribution was sought. There was also some concern about what the capital funding demand would be for the following years. We have been working through a process over the past few weeks with the Department in terms of the overall capital envelope available to the State and its implications for the capital plan.

This process is beginning to give us a bit of clarity about the implications for ourselves which will support the publication of it. We welcome the Government’s summer economic statement from a couple of days ago. It set out some reserve for the national children’s hospital and national broadband plan. We are working through that process with our colleagues in the Department of Health. We are moving towards the publication of the plan, which I expect to emerge in the coming weeks.