Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to begin by genuinely welcoming the fact that we have reached a time in Irish politics where long-term strategic capital and infrastructural planning has become part of the political discourse. This in itself is a good development. For far too long, we have staggered from Government to Government and budget to budget, with Ministers expected to think short term in order to deliver for their own constituencies. Without a doubt, this has contributed to the imbalance in developments that we have seen across the island.

In the same vein, it is essential that the national planning framework has broad cross-party support in order for its vision to be achieved by successive Governments. Sinn Féin welcomes several proposals in the plan, such as the commitment to the M20 motorway, and regionally speaking the 96-bed unit in University Hospital Limerick . These initiatives represent the potential for progress.

We are also fully supportive of the Government's decision to reinvest and revamp its capital spending, marking a distinct change of direction for this Government. In 2014, Ireland had the lowest level of public expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product, GDP, of the entire EU 28. Astonishingly, we repeated this feat in 2015. Such low levels of State investment in infrastructure are exactly why we have a housing and health crisis today. That is also why so many of the proposals in this plan are actually old projects that are overdue by a decade. I remember standing on a platform in Nenagh in 2009 calling for the 96-bed unit. It has taken ten years, but it is welcome.

We cannot simply see capital investment as low-hanging fruit to cut away and expect a country to stand still. It will in fact go backwards, which is what has happened to our infrastructure over the last decade. I support the Government's commitment to increase investment in this plan. However, I must also highlight the fact that Sinn Féin disagrees with how the Government intends to do this. Project Ireland 2040 essentially represents a commitment to the flawed, wasteful and expensive model of public private partnership, PPP. Whatever case could be made for PPPs as an emergency measure in the bad times is long gone. They enable the Government in the short term to dress up considerable amounts of public expenditure and put it off the balance sheet. PPPs are essentially an accounting anomaly that lead to the distortion of public debt. The evidence from Britain clearly shows that PPPs do not give value for money. The British National Audit Office recently reviewed three different Departments' use of public private partnerships, and found the PPP model to be consistently more expensive than the traditional procurement process. Its review found a PPP hospital to cost a staggering 70% more than a publicly-funded one and a bundle of schools to cost 40% more. Only three countries in the EU spend more on PPPs than Ireland as a percentage of GDP, namely, Britain, Hungary and Slovakia. Members will notice that two of those countries are governed by parties of the hard and far right. Everyone else seems to have copped on to the fact that they are a waste of money.

I cannot cite statistics in regard to the performance of PPPs in Ireland, because we do not have that information. The value for money tests which the State carries out on PPPs are not made public. The contracts are not made public. Post-project reviews are rarely carried out by the State, and not one single review has even been published. I wonder why that is. As of 2016, the Irish State was spending €225 million per year on public private partnerships. That figure is expected to reach €345 million by 2021, and to increase further to coincide with Project Ireland 2040.

Particularly with the collapse of Carillion, we need to take another look at the use of public private partnerships. Even putting their excessive cost aside, there is a real moral hazard here which can be exploited by the private market. Sinn Féin is of the view that the inclusion of PPPs in this plan is a major mistake, and I ask the Government to reconsider their inclusion.