Gerard Murphy (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Question 82: To ask the Minister for Finance the reason he opposes a unit with his Department to audit the quality of evaluation of the costs and benefits of major projects. [18332/05]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Primary responsibility for the evaluation, planning and execution of capital projects should rest with Ministers, line Departments and their implementing agencies. My Department has a strong concern to promote the pursuit of optimal value for money by Departments and implementing agencies from public capital investment. It has been doing this through the framework of the five year rolling multi-annual capital envelopes and the newly published revised guidelines for the appraisal and management of capital expenditure proposals in the public sector. These guidelines set out the framework within which Departments and agencies evaluate the costs and benefits of projects. Under my Department's general conditions of sanction to expenditure under the capital envelopes Departments must put in place a system to carry out annual spot checks for compliance with the capital appraisal guidelines, including those relating to evaluation.

The EU co-financed NDP-CSF evaluation unit is an independent evaluation unit under the aegis of my Department which has responsibility under the direction of the technical assistance monitoring committee for evaluation of the NDP operational programmes and related issues. In this regard, it has engaged in, or overseen, a number of evaluations since the commencement of the NDP, including the evaluation of investment in key capital programmes such as the road network and in public transport. It has also assisted my Department in relation to the revision of the above mentioned capital appraisal guidelines. The role of NDP-CSF evaluation unit is being extended to carrying out periodic reviews on behalf of my Department of the spot check reports from Departments under the capital envelopes. It will, therefore, have a role in auditing the quality of the evaluation of capital projects.