Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The Minister says that during a tendering process, one should not advertise how much one is likely to pay. That is exactly what the Government did when it bought the land concerned. The Government let it be known that it had €30 million to spend on a farm on which to build a prison. It got a farm, all right. The Minister expects me to jump up and down and applaud him for building a wall around a farm. That is as far as we have got after all these years.

We are entitled to know what direction the Minister intends to take. He has said he abandoned the PPP model because it was unaffordable. I always contended that it was unaffordable and did not represent value for money. The Minister believes he should be congratulated for abandoning the PPP model even though he embarked on a PPP arrangement in respect of this project in the first instance. I do not doubt that traditional procurement methods would deliver this facility much more cheaply than the preferred bidder method that was contemplated at the time. Can the Minister tell the House, so that Members can relay the information to people who are interested in penal policy, what kind of timeframe is envisaged before prison spaces will be available at Kilsallaghan?

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