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

I asked the ESRI to give me an assessment of the implementation of the national development plan and the kinds of issue that I believed should be considered in its future. The ESRI is an abundantly authoritative organisation that is well capable of choosing what issues it wants to consider in replying to the mandate I gave it and the piece of work I asked it to do. It is not fully fair to say that the ESRI ignored inflation in this context, as I do not believe that is the case. The ESRI stated that, in an economy that had experienced inflation and now had many different supply constraints, it was not credible to be able to say that we could make progress on everything at the same time. The ESRI asked the Government to consider a number of decisions that could be made – in fairness to the Deputy, she recognised these in her earlier question to me – to shift economic activity around in our economy to better prioritise public capital projects. The ESRI gave some fair consideration to inflation and the supply constraints within the economy. I am now working with all Ministers on this matter to see whether we can make further allocations to capital spending plans in various Departments to try to progress important projects. By and large, we have been successful in ensuring that the majority of projects are still moving ahead despite the impact of inflation. We have been able to do so because of the strength of our public finances. They might not all be moving forward at the pace we would have wanted, but the majority are still moving forward. I am committed to ensuring the impact of the NDP this year and beyond.

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