Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State knows, the new process consists of independent expert reviews. These reviews have replaced the technical reviews previously conducted by the Department for business cases. Independent reviewers seems to mean consulting firms and for large EAP contracts, this seems to mean the large, generalist consultancy firms. What I am concerned about is that these consultancy firms would actually be driving Government policy. Does the move towards an EAP represent an outsourcing of a process previously conducted by the Department? What is the justification for this outsourcing? It is claimed that this is based on the report by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, but I could not see any clear recommendations in that report to outsource this work. In fact, the report recommends a stronger role for the Department in approving non-major projects. I ask the Minister of State to explain that.

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