Addressing the country's infrastructural deficit is a key priority of the national development plan. Since 1997, particularly in the early years of the plan, the Government has deliberately increased and maintained annual Exchequer capital investment at historically high levels. Compared to an expenditure of 3.4% of GNP in 1997, capital expenditure has been maintained at around 5% of GNP in the past few years. This is twice the EU average. When public private partnership investment in public projects and the contribution of CIE resources to public transport investment are taken into account, total capital spending on this basis will be about €5.9 billion, an increase of more than €350 million, or 6%, on 2003. Subject to an overall sustainable budgetary environment, the Government is committed to maintaining public capital investment at similarly high levels in the medium term. This will mean more modest nominal levels of year-on-year increases than in the early years of the NDP. The Government is satisfied that this approach will yield sustained output at good value. Regrettably, as the ESRI confirmed in its recent evaluation, the large annual nominal increases in the early years of the NDP were considerably diluted by runaway construction industry inflation.