Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with much of what the Deputy said. As he knows, we are putting a tranche of investment into Irish Water through the National Pensions Reserve Fund. Legislation will be brought in before the end of the year by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, which will change the National Pensions Reserve Fund into the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. That device will be a primer of jobs across the economy.

In 2011, we announced what the profile of capital expenditure would be, so there is nothing new. We are not cutting every year. We had to balance the books as best we could. We are spending almost €17 billion in the voted public capital programme. That is being supplemented by other announcements I have made, such as the €2.25 billion last year and the €150 million, modest enough as it is, this year. One hopes there will be more announcements when the sale of State assets comes through to supplement necessary capital investment. In terms of the monitoring about which the Deputy spoke, he made some good suggestions which will certainly be reflected on.

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