Mr. Ronnie Downes:

I thank Deputy Canney. He has raised a number of important points. I will go through them in turn. Perhaps I will pick up first on the comment on the important role of the national development plan as a motor to drive us out of the Covid situation into economic progress and prosperity. It is very much our view that the national development plan, if properly calibrated and allocated towards appropriate projects, can serve this purpose. The Deputy is quite right that balanced growth among our regions is an important priority to which we are paying particular attention as the national development plan and its review move forward.

With regard to the specific questions raised by the Deputy on the capacity to spend and regulatory hurdles, there is many a slip between cup and lip. When a major project is announced we cannot expect it to arrive weeks or months later. Sometimes it will take years before the red tape is finally cut on it. We have improved and strengthened our public spending code. This is our capital appraisal framework for getting capital projects from conception stage through to contract for procurement and delivery phase. The capital appraisal framework has been in place for a long number of years. We have been streamlining and refining it and taking account of best international practice as best we can. A number of clear gateways are in place. These are decision points to see where we have got to. It is not enough to just have a good idea to build a project. It needs to undergo a lot of rigorous analysis on the various options including cost-benefit analysis of various options and the risks involved and the likely costs. I would not necessarily call them hurdles. I would call them stages where projects need to prove their worth before they can move along from conception and idea stage to reality. This is particularly the case when hundreds of millions or billions of euro of public expenditure are in question. If it is the case that some horses fall at some of the hurdles along the racecourse, to use the analogy, perhaps it is because they should have fallen. Perhaps the earlier they fall the better so people can turn their attention to other areas. In other words, if they do not prove their worth or show they can pass various value for money criteria or be managed within certain risk boundaries, than perhaps they should not proceed. This is not a sin. It is a feature of good management.

There are many other issues throughout the system to which our colleagues in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are paying a lot of attention. These include reforming and streamlining aspects of the planning framework, which has been the subject of some criticism over the years where delays can arise. We are working together to streamline the public spending code. We are making it clear how to move quickly and swiftly. Many delays can take place, which is relevant to another point the Deputy has raised, because perhaps in the past there has not always been that same rigorous quality of analysis going into those early stages. International evidence shows the earlier we intervene, and the closer and more rigorous the scrutiny is at the early phases of a contract, the more we set ourselves up for success in future or eliminate those projects that are not likely to be success stories. This is not a bad thing.

With regard to the role of consultants, it is the case that over time we have been progressively building up our capacity in the Civil Service and public service to conduct capital appraisals and the type of analysis that has been done. Over time, these skills have been disseminated and normalised throughout the Civil Service and public service. The need for consultants to come in to do what should be an intrinsic part of capital appraisal is diminishing over time. There is a valuable role for consultants, including international peers coming in to take a look from time to time and provide objective analysis. The dependency on consultants to do basic appraisal work is diminishing all the time, however.

With regard to value for money and the role of the contract, it is mainly the responsibility of our colleagues in the Office of Government Procurement, OGP. A lot of engagement has taken place between experts and practitioners in the construction sector. The Construction Industry Federation has particular insights into how to make the public works contract a more efficient and attractive proposition for tenderers and contractors in Ireland. The OGP has been very responsive to this and is working on a suite of amendments, adjustments and refinements to the public works contract.

It is also the case that people are becoming more familiar with the public works contract and how it operates. Whether it is adversarial by nature or design or whether this is a feature of how some contracts are operated is not something I am in an expert position to comment on. A lot of work is going on. The points and perspectives on which the Deputy has reflected regarding the need to keep the public works contract under review and refinement are issues to which colleagues in the OGP are very alive at present. A lot of work is going on in this regard.

With regard to PPPs, the Deputy gave a couple of interesting examples of primary care centres. I will make a general point before I move to the specifics. PPPs are an arrangement between the public and private sectors to procure, contract, deliver and, in some cases, manage and run infrastructure intended for public use. They have advantages and disadvantages. They are suitable for some areas and less suitable for others. One of the advantages of public private partnerships is that when properly contracted and entered into, they can give a degree of certainty on the public side about what the cost will be and the risk can be transferred. It has to be managed and often it is expertly managed on the private side. Sometimes the balance can be quite right. Sometimes we know that projects which have been traditionally entirely publicly procured can run into trouble. This can expose the State to a lot of costs and danger. PPPs are a way of managing this.

To come to the specifics, it is a matter for each individual sector to make known its view on the trade-off between entering an arrangement and what we get. Colleagues in the health sector will probably say primary health care centres are a relative success story in bringing health closer to patients and communities. The trade-off for this might be that it needs to cede control, management, maintenance and upkeep of the premises to a private entity.

With regard to some of those specific issues, the way the Deputy presented it, it sounded as if the private operator might have been a little bit too pernickety about how it grants permission for certain necessary and useful works to take place on the lands it is managing. It is a question the Deputy might pursue further by running it to earth perhaps with colleagues in the HSE estates and the Department of Health, as they would have a more direct knowledge of how that is working.

We recognise that Irish Water is a key strategic element, not just for its own sake in terms of water provision but as an enabler and a prerequisite, including waste water, for the delivery of housing. It is a specific part of the equation in terms of addressing the housing challenge.