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

I will not read out to Deputy Doherty the answer I have just shared with Deputy Calleary. I will just answer the specific question the former has put to me. I have already identified that we will seek to make a further €500 million available in 2019, 2020 and 2021 as part of the summer economic statement. This will take the additional amount of new capital we will be allocating across that period to more than €4 billion. The total amount of capital funding that will be available between 2018 and 2021 will be approximately €26.8 billion. At the end of this programme we will be increasing gross voted capital by nearly 85% more than where we stood in 2016. For those reasons I am not currently planning to increase the level of additional public capital expenditure that will go into those figures because I believe a near doubling of the level of public capital expenditure across those years is a very strong increase and because my judgment is that if we were to look to increase it further beyond that pace, we could get into difficulties regarding value for money and making sure we have the right amount of capacity in the economy to translate those levels of expenditure into the schools, roads, bridges and primary care centres we want to make happen. For these reasons, I am not at present planning a further change in that capital expenditure figure beyond that which I decided in the summer economic statement.

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