Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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95. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his views on the use of bundled construction projects for delivery of the National Development Plan; if he accepts that in the event of such a strategy being deployed that all component parts of the bundle should be at the same stage of readiness to proceed to construction; if he is satisfied that this is the case; if, in circumstances where it is apparent that there is a significant gap in the readiness of projects that are bundled, he will indicate the steps, if any, his Department has taken to disentangle the bundle and proceed with the ready component parts of the bundle; the contractual consequences, if any, of this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11654/23]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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As Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery, and Reform I am responsible for setting the overall capital allocations across Departments. Management and delivery of individual investment projects within the allocations agreed under the NDP is a key responsibility of every Department and Minister. My department is also responsible for maintaining the national frameworks within which Departments operate to ensure optimal value for money for public expenditure.

In terms of developing projects, it is up to each Department, with their agencies, to decide which approach suits best depending on the project type. The relevant Department is then responsible for ensuring that a Business Case is developed to meet the requirements of the Public Spending Code, which should also set out the preferred planning and procurement strategy for delivering the project.

Bundling has been deployed to deliver projects across a number of capital programmes including the education, housing, health, transport and justice sectors. Typically, bundling has been most readily applied in the delivery of Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts in these sectors but it has also been applied in a number of public works contracts. Scheme designs for these larger scale projects are typically prepared by a single design team and brought through the statutory planning processes at the same time and subsequently procured together for delivery within the chosen contract types, be they PPP or public works.

The individual Departments are responsible for ensuring that the decision making and policy matters pertaining to each project is managed so that no one project impacts negatively on the overall delivery timelines. For example, if a single project were to be delayed in the planning process, then during pre-procurement, it might be possible to decouple the project from the bundle and procure it as a single project contract or include it in a subsequent bundle, depending on the constraints being managed by the particular Department. If the tender process for a bundle has already commenced, then decoupling a project from that bundle may impact on the procurement process and associated timelines. It must be said that where a contract for a bundle has been awarded, then contractually the options to decouple a project from that bundle are more limited.