Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 27 November 2018
82. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if the annual unitary payments for each of the past and current public-private partnerships will be published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48993/18]
View answerThe Deputy might be interested to know that I already publish two sets of financial data on PPPs. The data can be accessed on the PPP website at www.ppp.gov.ie. The first set of data provides an update on the existing Financial Commitments table. This table contains detailed information in relation to all PPP projects for which contracts have been signed and which are either operational or in construction. Information is broken out by individual project on the type of PPP model being used, the operational date of the project, the capital contractual value of the project, the total unitary payments made to the end of 2017, the projected total future unitary payments for each project, other PPP related costs, the total cost of each project, the year of final payment and the name of the PPP company delivering the project.
In addition to this considerable amount of information contained in the Financial Commitment table, I have also published the projected annualised breakdown of the expected future unitary payments for each year, by project, extending out to when each project will be handed back by the PPP Company to the Sponsoring Authority.
The published data is intended to provide indicative information in relation to PPP projects, based on information provided to my Department by the relevant responsible Departments or Agencies. The Central PPP Policy Unit in my Department endeavours to ensure that the information is as accurate as possible but any queries in relation to the details of specific projects should be confirmed directly with the State authorities responsible for those projects.
I should inform the Deputy, however, that with reference to PPP projects in the water sector, since 1st January 2014, Irish Water has statutory responsibility for all aspects of water services planning, delivery and operation at national, regional and local levels, and this includes taking on responsibility for the water related ‘PPPs’ from the local authorities.
As water projects have been fully funded by the Exchequer they are already classified as on-balance sheet in General Government terms. Such projects are not generally regarded as ‘classic’ PPPs as they do not involve private finance and there are no contingent liabilities associated with them since there is no risk of a potential future GGB or GGD impact associated with such projects given that they are already on-balance sheet - unlike ‘classic’ PPPs. On this basis, we do not record these projects on the PPP.gov.ie website, nor do I propose to change that approach.
Details of the PPP projects in the water area would, however, be available from Irish Water.
