Paul McGrath (Westmeath, Fine Gael)

The Minister and I agree on a lot of things. We agree it is necessary to have the cost-benefit analysis and we agree that the sponsoring body is the body that should be responsible for producing this. However, the major disagreement between us and where we differ is that the Minister wants to keep secret all this cost-benefit analysis material such as the research and so on. Is there not a case to be made that this should be made public at some stage, not under the 30-year rule but within a much shorter timescale? There must be public confidence in these projects. Public confidence has been lost in recent times because of overruns and so on but thankfully, this situation has tightened up now. Will the Minister give a commitment that he will move forward towards making this material available and give the public an opportunity to see and analyse it?

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