Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There will be a specific paper on this issue, which will be one of the outputs from phase 1 of the review of the NDP. In broad terms, I am a strong believer that time spent at the project preparation stage is time well spent, by ensuring the project has been comprehensively appraised and assessed, that the potential pitfalls have been identified in advance and that the design work is essentially complete. We are proposing that, at key decision points in the process and before we press the final button and commit significant public funds to a project, we ask outside parties and external people with expertise in this area to have a look at projects and make sure that the process has been robust. They will feed that into the final decision, which will be ultimately be made by the Government, on projects with a cost in excess of €100 million.

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