Seanad debates

Friday, 28 May 2021

Affordable Housing Bill 2021: Committee Stage

 

9:30 am

Photo of Fintan WarfieldFintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For the purpose of the debate, I wish to reflect on a parliamentary question submitted in August 2020, the response to which indicated that €256.9 million was spent on public private partnerships in 2019. The public private partnership model has been criticised by numerous bodies, including the European Court of Auditors, for not delivering for taxpayers' money, not being efficient and not delivering projects on time and within budget. In my view, the use of public private partnerships has been shown to waste taxpayer's money, whether it is in the education, health or transport sectors. The model has been proven to be an inefficient use of public money and to lack proper transparency. The unwillingness on the part of successive Governments to acknowledge that and to move away from the public private partnership model is equally frustrating. Examples such as the national children's hospital project, the national broadband plan and infrastructure which does not actually return to State ownership all prove the point. In the context of housing and this amendment, if we are trying to keep building costs down and other costs as low as possible in the context of schemes so that affordable prices can be assured, then we definitely need to avoid public private partnerships.

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