Mr. Ronnie Downes:

Yes. To expand just a little bit, I will mention one of the things we have learned from experience with regard to how we manage capital expenditure programmes as against how we manage current expenditure programmes. We have reached a pretty structured approach with regard to capital projects. With the new public spending code, there is a project lifecycle.

One of the lessons we learned when capital projects, including big ones, went wrong over the years was that a lack of effort and attention to detail at the outset of the planning stage will bedevil a project all the way through, including in respect of monitoring its effectiveness. This lesson should apply, in principle, to current programmes such that, right at the outset, before a well-meaning or nice-sounding project comes forward, we will have to do some due diligence to be clear on what we are trying to achieve with it and to determine how we will know whether it succeeds and its likely impacts in terms of the various dimensions of quality. Once that rigorous process takes place at the outset, it puts all of us, as policy stakeholders, in a better position to monitor and hold people accountable for what is delivered. Unfortunately, what can tend to happen not only in Ireland but also in other countries is that where a project is proposed based on some brainwave or other, there can be an impetus to move forward with it before it is subject to the rigours I have mentioned. People may criticise the latter as causing a delay or being overly bureaucratic but we have certainly learned the lesson on the capital side that more focus on getting things right at the outset stands us in good stead throughout the project lifecycle. Those good principles also apply on the current side.