Mr. John Conlon:

I appreciate the Cathaoirleach is making a political point. Can I make one quick response, not directly responding to that? In terms of the Comptroller and Auditor General's experiences, through his annual reports and through special reports, we engage through our Government accounting unit. We are doing some work on how we can adapt the public spending code into our public financial procedures in a better way. That work is ongoing. That might help in the case of some of the criticisms the Cathaoirleach has in that respect.

In terms of the amount of money we spend on the national development plan, NDP, and there are cost overruns and there are some bad experiences, I have to make the point that from that €12 billion this year there will be a lot of good output as well.