Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Obviously, we all hope there will be no capital carry-overs but there are a few issues. The phase 1 report on the national development plan states that we need to be cognisant of supply-side capacity constraints and that the public sector has a limited capacity to deliver investment in any given year, regardless of how much funding is made available, which is concerning. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, has stated that spending the entire capital allocation of €10.8 billion would be challenging. The ESRI has noted, "it is evident that the domestic construction sector is unable to meet the scale of production required". We have an infrastructural deficit that needs to be dealt with and Deputy Boyd Barrett went into detail on that but the capital spend will be very important for growing the economy and dealing with the challenges we face. Do the witnesses accept the ESRI's view that the private sector alone may be unable to meet the demand?