Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Of the €200 million investment to which the Minister referred, all of which will be directly funded by the Exchequer, how much will come from the sale of State assets?

The Minister indicated that the value for money audit is a standard part of the project appraisal process. According to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, €6.2 billion was invested in the water services sector between 2000 and 2010. This involved 66 very large projects, many of them in the wastewater sector. The astonishing thing is that when one questions that Department about value for money auditing of these projects, it claims to have no role in the matter and bounces the ball back to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. However, a parliamentary question I put to the Minister, Deputy Howlin, for answer today in respect of the wastewater sector and the value for money auditing which apparently has not been carried out in respect of these projects, my question was disallowed. I am asking why, where the PPP route was chosen for wastewater projects that formed part of that investment €6.2 billion, value for money audits either have not been carried out, or if they have, it is almost impossible to obtain the detail from the system as to what those audits reflected?

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