Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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349. To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 286 of 1 February 2017, in which he stated that his Department has not submitted any projects for consideration to the EFSI, the way it is the case that despite this, 14 primary care centre PPP projects are being financed with funding from the EIB under this programme; the way in which the funding for these projects will work; if any Government capital finance is involved in their construction; and if his Department has undertaken a comparison of the costs of the PPP method with costs of traditional direct build method. [6657/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Government decided in July 2012 to develop Primary Care Centres using the Public Private Partnership (PPP) delivery method. All PPP projects involving the use of private finance must be referred to the National Development Finance Agency (NDFA) to advise on the optimum means of financing public investment projects in order to achieve value for money and to provide advice in relation to all aspects of financing, refinancing and insurance, including risk analysis, of public investment projects. Therefore, the financing of the PPP project is managed by the NDFA on behalf of the Department of Finance, who submitted an application to the European Investment Bank (EIB) for funding. The NDFA worked with the HSE to complete the EIB’s due diligence process.

The PPP is funded through a combination of private equity, commercial debt and a €70m EIB loan taken out by the PPP company. Therefore, no government capital funding is provided for the construction of the PPP project.