Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

A value for money review was carried out and those different aspects were taken into account in that study. I do not wish to be blunt but I need to be blunt. The country is in receivership. We are way past the stage where we can do things on the basis of cost-benefit analyses. In the past when the country was not in receivership one could decide to spend €2 million and down the line that €2 million would generate €6 million or €7 million for the wider economy. We are not in that position any more. We do not have the €2 million in the first place; in fact we have minus €2 million. The context in which we are now making decisions is very different from what it was. The first question we need to ask ourselves is how much money do we have. We then need to decide how we should arrange expenditure within that constrained budget. That is the context in which decisions have to be made. We have to cut our cloth to suit our measure. That is the reality we face.

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