Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

As the Minister of State will be aware, for quite a while my party has been arguing that we use a portion of the National Pensions Reserve Fund to fund a stimulus programme for investment to get people back to work. Given that there are 439,000 on the live register and 6,000 people leaving the State every month in search of work, we definitely need to use that discretionary portfolio.

The question is very focused. The Government announced its jobs plan, in which key action No. 12 states: "Through the Strategic Investment Fund, channel commercial investment from the NPRF and matching investment from private sector investors towards productive investment in the Irish economy." While I welcome that, I want to know, given this is one of the key actions in the jobs plan, how much money the Government is ear-marking for investment. Obviously, the investment is commercial so the sector will have to tap into it. What pool of money is available for channelling commercial investment? Is it the full €5.4 billion or a portion of that? What discussion has the Government had with the troika? Is the troika agreeable to the level of funding that is available? It is clear that €250 million is available to the infrastructure fund. What is not clear is what pool of money is available for the commercial investment.

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