Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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As Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform I am responsible for setting the overall capital allocations across Departments and for monitoring monthly expenditure at a Departmental level. Decisions on how and where those allocations are invested by Departments are a matter, in the first instance, for my Ministerial colleagues. The key role in leading development at county level rests with the relevant local authority.

However, my Department has published Regional Reports for 2018 and 2019 under Project Ireland 2040 which give a detailed overview of the public investments which have been made throughout the country including in Cork and the rest of the South-West region. While the Regional Reports for the South-West do not provide an exhaustive list of all public capital expenditure in the region, they serve to highlight the diverse range of capital investments being made by the State in the county of Cork.

More granular information on individual projects and programmes can be found on the capital investment tracker published by my Department and mostly recently updated in December 2020. The tracker provides a composite update on the progress of all major investments that make up Project Ireland 2040. It focuses on projects with estimated costs greater than €20 million. The last update increased the coverage of projects, included the facility to search the tracker by county and added user-friendly dashboards and other information to aid interpretation of the data.

The myProjectIreland interactive map was also updated in December 2020 and was extended to include almost 800 projects across the country. By clicking on the map on gov.ie/2040, citizens will find updated information on what has been achieved and what is planned for their own local area. This version features a dashboard with charts, allowing citizens to see the progress being made on projects at a glance. New search facilities also allow citizens to view projects in their regional area, by city, by county or by eircode. The Project Ireland 2040 Regional Reports, capital investment tracker and myProjectIreland interactive map are all available on gov.ie/2040. Further updates to these publications are planned for later this year.