Mr. Eoin Dorgan:

The broad rationale for PPPs is trying to use private sector expertise and innovation. There is also the element where an element of risk is transferred to the private sector that it can manage.

With housing and the higher education sector, these projects were brought forward by the relevant Departments and they have proposed that they can be done by PPPs. In housing or even higher education, we are very conscious, as I am sure everyone is, of the capacity constraints in the construction sector and also the delivery of big capital projects. With PPPs, we tend to get bigger, more international potential contractors so that could bring an additional element of capacity. Construction capacity was a key element of the ESRI review that fed into the national development plan review last year. That is one potential attraction of PPPs in the higher education and social housing projects that are active at the moment.