Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If I understand properly, the Minister of State has not seen the public sector benchmark, so he cannot unequivocally say that this represents value for money and he is taking it on trust. If one takes two housing projects that commenced construction today, the public private partnership that is currently under construction and traditional social housing delivered by a local authority and an approved housing body, it is unequivocal from the information that we have that the public private partnership will get a significantly larger amount of money to deliver, manage and maintain the units, and that is before we even get into the issue of risk adjustment or cost. Given that the Minister of State has not seen the public sector benchmark, why will he not publish it now? The contract has been signed and the contractors are on site. The Minister of State could publish this now because it is no longer of any commercial sensitivity to bundles 2 and 3 because they will have separate public sector benchmarks. Will the Minister of State give a commitment that, when that public sector benchmark is eventually published, he will come to the House or the committee where we can properly scrutinise it? If I am wrong at that stage and there is value for money, I am more than happy to accept it and hope the Minister of State would do the same.

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