Mary O'Rourke (Fianna Fail)

This bodes well for the future for us. The ESRI set out to look at where it had been planned to spend the money, what worked and, more important from the point of view of our evaluation of its evaluation, where it did not work or where there were fault lines. One of those related to project appraisal and evaluation, and hands-on project management. We are always being told that big brother should get off our backs, that we are free and should be allowed to manage our own affairs. This is a very agreeable scenario up to a point. An examination of the expenditure which has already been spent and the work still remaining shows that project management at a very tight managerial level has been the underlying lack in many of the programmes outlined in the review. The Department of Finance and the agencies it will engage have clearly stated that for the three remaining years of the plan, the Department will keep a hand on those projects because its job is to watch the money. In most cases the Department of Finance says "no". I never regarded that attitude as a bad thing in either a Minister for Finance or in the Department of Finance. That is their job. When I was in the Department of Education, I always said we had to say "no" first and then say, "maybe, we will look at it." I am in favour of the Department taking a micro management approach and keeping a close watch on expenditure, project management and evaluation and evaluation of the economic cost of disruption.

The evaluation is a good one. Obviously other Senators will be interested in what happened their pet projects. The policy document is worthy of close study. There has been much debate about the review on television and radio programmes. The economic cost of disruption was one of the points raised which was not included in the costings. I am of the view that disruption is a necessary evil in the completion of a project. If there is disruption, it is the means to an economic and social end and must be endured before a project can prove its value to those who use it.

When there is a discussion about buses versus Luas and Luas versus rail, we must acknowledge that we are quite far behind in the provision of public transport. Cities such as Paris and London had underground rail systems over 100 years ago. We had buses and trains—