Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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376. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform further to parliamentary Question No. 215 of 6 April 2017, the reason his Department does not publish details of the projected annual cost of individual PPP projects over their lifetime. [27366/17]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department's primary role in relation to PPPs is to facilitate the PPP process centrally by developing the general policy framework (including, where necessary, the legal framework) and the capital investment policy framework within which PPPs operate and by providing central guidance to Departments and other State Authorities in that context.

Financial responsibility for individual PPP and concession projects rests with the relevant Sponsoring Department or agency.

My Department publishes a full suite of guidance to facilitate the PPP process, which is available on the Central PPP Unit's website at www.ppp.gov.ie. The website also contains details in respect of each individual PPP and Concession project, collected by my Department from the relevant Sponsoring Department or agency, on the contractual capital value, cost of unitary payments paid to date, future contractual commitments and year in which the final payment is due to be paid, for each such project. 

The Deputy will appreciate that collation of this detailed financial information, from a variety of different sponsoring Departments/agencies, in respect of 25 different projects, each with payment obligations over a remaining contract life ranging from 6 years to 35 years, is a complex reporting task.  Clearly, it is also important to ensure that the information collated and published on the website is accurate and consistent with other existing reporting arrangements the Sponsoring Departments/agencies have with, for example, the Central Statistics Office and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General in relation to the same projects.  To date, it has been considered that the details published on the website in respect of each individual PPP and concession project, as I have outlined above, are comprehensive and provide transparency on the cost of each project over its lifetime.  Providing an additional breakdown of the future contractual commitments in each case, which extend to up to 35 years, would represent an important  change in the reporting responsibilities of my Department and would run the risk, for example, of impacting adversely on the timeliness of existing reporting.    

However, in light of the Deputy's question I have asked my Department to consider the scope for providing further details in relation to the breakdown of projected future unitary payment commitments by project on an annual basis in future years, in consultation with the Central Statistics Office and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, having regard to their plans for the publication by them of financial details in relation to the projects in question in their annual publications.