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

It is not the voice of officialdom making these points, it is me. If we were in a situation where we ended up paying more for projects than we should, the Deputy would be in here immediately criticising me for doing it. I will not allow the taxpayer to be in that place. If we look at what we are planning to do, from a capital expenditure point of view, as it is this year we will invest €4.5 billion in capital investment. By 2018, with none of the changes to which I referred, that figure will increase to €5.3 billion and the year after it will increase to €6 billion. There is a steady pace of increase in capital expenditure to meet the needs to which the Deputy is referring, and a huge amount of work has got under way to make sure we provide the type of office space to allow companies and investors be present and create jobs in Ireland. I know what more we need to do on housing, but this is the reason we have a fund of €5 billion in place to try to at least deal with the public housing element of our challenge.

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