Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The National Development Finance Agency is there to advise us on these and it is linked with the agency which manages our debt. It has a considerable competence in advising us on these matters. On the general abstract issue of PPPs raised by the Deputy, there are advantages in the PPP, as the Comptroller and Auditor General himself accepted in an answer to the Committee of Public Accounts earlier this year. Of course, we must be vigilant about them.

There are certain other advantages to PPPs as well. They involve a payment linked to performance over the entire lifetime of the project and they are long-term contracts where bidders focus on the whole life-cycle cost of the project and not just on the upfront capital cost. The construction times post-contract tend to be faster as the private sector is incentivised to complete the project in order to begin to receive regular payments.

The private sector innovation and commercial management expertise is brought into delivering important public facilities. A contractual framework to allocate risk to the party that can manage it best is devised.

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