Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

It is also important to recognise that the value can only be assessed over a period of 25 years and the way in which the risks were transferred has to be considered. These will be accelerated projects and might not have been delivered as quickly under our own capital programme. Equally it must be considered that management is built into the project. This must all be taken into account when looking at the figures. We learned from the first bundle of schools and we took on board all the recommendations of the pilot project. The interest rate charged on those projects was 6.196%. The interest rate on the National Maritime Museum was 5.563% and 4.5% on the Cork School of Music. When one takes into consideration the 25 years, the management of the projects being included and the state-of-the-art buildings, these have been very good value for money.

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