Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is my strong awareness that the bill needs to be paid some time that led me to take such care with the use of public private partnerships and undertake to review the role they can play in infrastructure funding. In all of the enthusiasm around the use of PPPs, we must bear in mind that there remains a liability the Exchequer must meet. The fact it is not inputted directly on the State balance sheet does not change the reality that for existing PPPs, we now have bullet payments of hundreds of millions of euro we must meet each year.

Regarding the Deputy's point on the reduction in capital expenditure, that was done during the crash for two reasons. First, we went through a period in which the demand for infrastructure was much lower than had been predicted. There simply was not the need for new buses, trains and new forms of public transport because the existing facilities were not being used in the way we had anticipated. The second reason for the reduction was that we did not wish to impose further cuts on current expenditure in areas such as social welfare. If we had reduced those spending programmes even further during that period, the Deputy would have criticised us for so doing.

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