The value for money of that project will best be gauged over its 25 year life span. Those projects are up and running much quicker than under traditional arrangements. There are people in my constituency who are anxious to find out when their school merger projects will be included in PPP, and if people are not like that in the Deputy's constituency, he must live in another country. These parents have gone to see these schools and they know, as I know, that if they become part of a PPP pilot project like this one, the lessons from the early days of the process will be learned. If we try new ways of doing things, we learn as we go along.
If we were to depend, however, on the traditional procedures of the Department to get those five schools up and running, the Deputy and I both know they would not be built. That is a fact. We should not suggest, as the Deputy did, that the PPP is a failure as it is not. We must learn lessons as we go along and take into account some of the recommendations from the Comptroller and Auditor General. The quality of schooling available in those schools and the quality of the work environment for the teachers are much better but are not part of any tangible asset on a balance sheet that would be considered in an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
We are politicians and while I respect the duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General to give his views on these matters because he has a job to do in terms of value for money in public procurement projects, I also know the PPP process is important if we are to deal with many of the infrastructural deficits about which the Opposition often moan. If the Deputy contends that we can do this through a traditional capital programme while staying within the stability and growth pact guidelines, he is not up to speed about what is available and what is possible.
