Ged Nash
Louth · Labour Party · Ireland
“However, it is a rich country that has a problem understanding that it is now sustainably rich. Those of us in opposition will, of course, say that this country needs to do better, and it can.”
“On the one hand, it is legitimate for an Opposition party to critique the economic model day in, day out. I do it myself all of the time, and we all know that Ireland can do better. However, at the same time, is that kind of critique helping to persuade those whom we need to persuade into a new Ireland? I am not so sure that it is.”
“There will be fiscal and financial implications for this State in that transition. There is an obligation on us, insofar as we can, to properly interrogate and consider those implications and to be upfront about them.”
“No, it did not, but let us not exaggerate its impact on the Irish economy. It is good and it had an impact, but was there a causal relationship? I am not so sure. The jury is out on that. However, is the Good Friday Agreement a good thing and good for our economy? Of course, it is. Did the guns fall silent in the North?”
“We are not good at describing what those accommodations will be or what that relationship with the UK will be, whether economically, socially, politically, culturally or otherwise. It is a relationship that will have to be maintained. It will look very different as we approach a new Ireland.”
“That was a very different prospect when the vast majority, if not all, of East German citizens wanted to become part of a united German polity. As we know, that is not the case on this island. We need to be careful about how we approach that.”
The complete record
Every one of 739 lines we hold for Ged Nash, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 14 of 15.
“Does the Minister agree that people with criminal convictions should be prohibited from being special advisers to Government Ministers?”
“The Minister has clarified that. I am happy to accept that. I hope then he will bring some renewed vigour, if I can describe it as such, to this particular process. This is fundamental. Parliamentary democracy is a fragile flower. We have seen across the world how bad actors can exploit situations of corruption or perceived corruption. The consequences of that are happening across the world. It is happening on our screens all the time and is having real impacts in the context of the election of populist right-wing leaders to positions of power. When the framework is revised, new obligations are going to be placed on elected officials and public officials, as has been advised in, for example, successive reports from SIPO.”
“I hope the Minister will agree that the standard for this legislation, for want of a better description, was set in the 2015 legislation developed by Brendan Howlin, my then colleague and one of the Minister's predecessors. It has been a considerable number of years since the commitment was made. We have had three Governments since the 2015 legislation was introduced. We have had the review, to which I contributed. I think there were merely ten submissions to that particular process. Whether the Minister likes it or not, there is a renewed interest in ethics and standards in public life with the invitation to Michael Lowry to participate in Government. The latter was viewed by the relevant tribunal as a corrupt figure, something he has not challenged in the courts. This is a matter of major and genuine public interest.”
“Will the Minister provide with an update on the Government's plans, as contained in the programme for Government, for updated ethics legislation. He will be well aware that we have been waiting a number of years to see the enactment of legislation that was committed to in the 2020 programme for Government. In fact, it first took draft legislative form in Brendan Howlin's public sector standards Bill in 2015.”
“The net effect of additional tariffs will be higher costs for families on this side of the Atlantic and, indeed, on the other side as well. Donald Trump is about to engage in a massive act of national self-harm against his own people. We are all awaiting those announcements with trepidation. I understand the necessity of bringing forward this resolution. We support it. As I understand it, I have formally moved my party's amendment. Will I get to speak on it later or is this my only opportunity to do so?”
“We have a problem with regulation in this country. The regulator seems to roll out the red carpet for big firms and screw householders and businesses with high energy costs without doing a proper analysis of why the prices are so high. We have toothless regulation in this country and consumers are paying the price. I welcome this initiative by the Government. We anticipated on budget night last year that it would be required. The Government should have listened to the Labour Party. We made a formal request by way of an amendment to the Government's financial resolution that the reduced rate be extended to the end of this year. We are glad to see it will be extended until the end of October. We have no doubt that families will face more difficulties this year, especially in light of what we are going to hear tonight from Donald Trump.”
“That will affect the average family to the tune of approximately €250. Other companies will follow. We need an independent analysis of why Ireland has the second-highest energy costs in the European Union. Most of us practising politicians will understand why that is the case. We know we are still far too reliant on expensive fossil fuels to generate the electricity we need. We know we are far too slow to reach our targets in respect of what former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar rightly said was our moonshot moment, that is, offshore wind generation. We can be more energy-efficient, we can meet our energy demands and we can be net exporters of energy if we do that. I am concerned that the regulator seems to sign off on a routine basis, without any apparent analysis, on all the price increases introduced by energy firms.”
“The scattergun measures introduced by the Government over the past few years were not targeted enough. Huge resources were allocated to those who may not have needed them. We in the Labour Party did not support that approach. What we need to do if we are to deal with energy poverty is introduce, for example, street-by-street retrofitting programmes. We proposed in our alternative budget and in our manifesto that we should move towards using a goodly portion of the Apple tax resource to implement a genuine national campaign of retrofitting to ensure we address energy poverty and meet our climate ambitions, which we are far away from meeting in 2030. Other energy companies will follow SSE Airtricity's lead in confirming today that the increases it announced last month will come into play.”
“Experts, including bonkers.ie and its analysts, are pointing out, as we know from our own experience, that when one electricity company moves, others will surely follow. The ESRI report issued this week shows that low-income families in particular are finding it extremely difficult to make ends meet at the moment. We know sacrifices are being made and that low-income families, especially, including the 1,600 surveyed by the ESRI, are cutting back on heating and groceries. A total of 63% of those surveyed indicated that this is how they have been dealing with the cost-of-living crisis. That is bad for families and bad for society. Families are also cutting back on footwear and clothing. We also know people are getting themselves into debt because of rising energy costs. We have a problem in this country with energy poverty.”
“I move amendment No. 1: In paragraph (1), to delete "31 October 2025" and substitute "31 December 2025". I thank the Minister of State for introducing this measure. We in the Labour Party anticipated last October that we might be in this position at this point in time. The Minister of State was not in her current role then but she may recall that on budget night, when the financial resolution was moved regarding the extension of the VAT reduction for a further period, we proposed that the reduction be maintained at least until the end of 2025. We did so in anticipation of very difficult times for families and that, indeed, has come to pass. Today, for example, SSE Airtricity confirmed that increases in energy prices it had previously announced will be implemented. The Government's resolution may have been informed by that.”
“It is a commitment to a fair future for all young carers and young adult carers and we should look at adopting in this country. Young carers and young adult carers are not asking for much. They do the work they do out of love. All they are asking for in return is for their futures to be protected and to feel that the structures of the State are wrapped around them in support of their work, not a constant barrier they must butt their heads against relentlessly in order to make any progress.”
“There is no recognition of the unpaid work young carers do in our social protection system and the rules governing carer's allowance, and other income supports often act, quite frankly, as barriers to young adult carers accessing or continuing in further education, training or employment. This is the definition of a poverty trap. As this motion calls for, we need a new national strategy for carers, specifically one that recognises the needs of young carers and young adult carers. We are behind some of our closest neighbours in this regard. Scotland, for example, just last week signed up to what they call the young carers covenant. In recent years, we, in this country, have stopped being innovators in the space of social progress and we need to catch up. We could do so by implementing, for example, this covenant.”
“It is a failure to support these young carers and young adult carers, but also a failure to provide State supported care for the adults who have come to depend on them through no fault of their own. As my colleagues set out, the impact of all this on young carers is absolutely profound and acute. In 2023, the Sharing the Caring report from Family Carers Ireland found, as Deputy Wall said, that 80% of young carers are at risk of clinical depression, and more than half feel they simply cannot cope. What are this new Government's plans to deal with this social emergency? There is not a word about young carers in the programme for Government.”
“This bright young man was pursuing an education that was to lead him into one of the medical professions. Unsurprisingly, his mother's worsening condition and the increased time he needed to be at home to take care of her made continuing on that path impossible. He also had to turn down the chance to work across the water. This is a young man who sacrificed a lot, but he is not asking for the world. He is just looking for a normal life and the opportunities all of us at that age took for granted. Asked what he needed, he just said, "A little help to get by". So far, and for reasons I cannot get my head around, that little help to get by in the form of carer's allowance has been denied to him. The case is under appeal and I sincerely hope that he will be successful. This is a double failure by the State.”
“In preparing for today's motion, I could not get away from the thought that if tens of thousands of children were working in any other industry in this country unpaid, unrecognised, unsupported and unprotected by the State, it would be an absolute national scandal. Yet, day after day, this is happening in homes the length and breadth of the country where young people are, as my colleagues have said, forced to fill in the gaps left by the State. They do it because they care and, in many cases, because they feel and know the State could not care less. Take, for example, an eloquent young man who made contact with me recently seeking help in getting carer's allowance. This is a young adult carer in his early 20s who looks after his mother full time.”
“An overarching amendment to future legislation might be able to house such a regulation, for want of a better description, and enable that to happen. Will the Minister of State commit to engaging with the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman on this issue and to coming back to us in any format? He can see that we are exercised about it. We want to resolve this. Our bona fides on it are well established. Will the Minister of State engage with the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman to see if there is an innovative and imaginative solution that balances everyone's rights while addressing this problem? If we can get such a commitment here this evening, it would be a good evening's work and we could return to the issue again.”
“I understand. We will be dealing with other finance-related Bills over the coming months. It is not unusual for an amendment that is not directly related to the subject matter of a Bill to be accommodated. This might be done in respect of the issue that is exercising me and Deputy Doherty. Deputy O'Callaghan has also spoken about it. This is not the first time I have raised this. We have raised it time and again in the Houses and elsewhere. The Minister of State understands the issue. He gets it. He is a constituency representative and a compassionate human being who understands that these problems arise all the time. He believes it is not possible to accommodate this in the legislation at the moment. We would disagree although regulation could potentially enable this area to be addressed.”
“I reiterate that if the political will is there to deal with this, it should not be beyond us to find a resolution to this very real problem.”
“An agency and organisation, operating under the laws we develop in this House and pass as a sovereign Parliament, should be able to interpret those laws and we should give it the latitude it needs to be able to operate in the real world and create some kind of practical framework to take these complaints and try to resolve them. The amendment is not overly explicit as to how that will be done. It is drafted broadly enough to allow the FSPO to look at all of the facts and merits of each individual case and make a determination as to whether it can take on the case while balancing everyone's interests. I find it extraordinary that there is an overly legalistic interpretation of these kinds of things. We deal all the time in this House with much more complex problems and we manage to find solutions.”
“It did a desktop assessment of the kinds of regimes in place in similar common law jurisdictions where, for example, GDPR laws apply. They referred to the UK financial services ombudsman which said, “it had similar problems, but crucially, it was able to help in some instances”. It did not go through in detail what those instances were, but clearly the legal system with which we have most in common, the UK common law system, managed to find a way around this to accommodate this unfortunate everyday reality. Deputy Doherty's amendment is well crafted and it gives some latitude to the FSPO to make a determination on whether a complaint is appropriate or whether it can accept that complaint.”
“With respect, the remarks the Minister of State read out are a restatement of the position the FSPO has put into correspondence with me over the years, and with others as well. Deputy Doherty is familiar with these kinds of cases. He has worked on them too. I imagine many other Members of the House have as well. The Deputy is right that we are legislators. We make the law and it is up to the agencies of the State to enforce that law. If the political will is there, it is surely not beyond our ability to develop an innovative solution that is fair to everyone and that can address these very real everyday human problems that are becoming more apparent by the day. I spoke last year to the Business Post , which started to express an interest in these cases.”
“I am interested in the Minister of State's views. It is a very human problem. It would be useful to hear his views on how the problem might be addressed.”
“Of course, it is used as the omni-excuse to cover everything by some agencies that would just prefer to not do anything at all and that is the defence. I accept, however, that when the ombudsman was corresponding with me on this issue that was not the purpose but was obliged to point out the obvious GDPR issues that would arise. It should not be beyond us as a Legislature to try to come up with an innovative solution to accommodate somebody’s rights because it is an all too human problem. It arises all of the time. I would like to think there are people in the FSPO and similar organisations who would like to see a solution to this. It is not immediately obvious to me what that is. Deputy Doherty's amendment is helpful in trying to get to the bottom of this and propose some kind of resolution.”
“That is a very real-life human set of circumstances that confronts far too many people and, arguably, is a form of economic and financial abuse that the FSPO is not in a position to investigate. It perpetrates another injustice against someone who has already experienced a number of injustices in his or her life. I have been in correspondence with the FSPO on this particular case and I believe it illustrates a broader problem. The ombudsman made it very clear that there are very obvious difficulties in framing a legislative amendment that might be able to accommodate everybody’s rights. I understand that. It seems that the ombudsman’s equivalent in the UK – the regulator there – has managed to steer a middle course on this and is acknowledging the problems. They too have a form of a GDPR regime. GDPR is not necessarily the problem.”
“It is a very welcome amendment and one I considered tabling but I did not manage to do so. I have dealt with cases over the years and I have engaged with the FSPO on behalf of constituents in situations where they were joint holders of a mortgage, the relationship had broken down and there was evidence of fraud, for the want of a better description, perpetrated by one of the people who held the account, which was accepted by the bank. The relationship had broken down and the person on the other side of that relationship wanted to make a complaint to the ombudsman about a matter related to that account and the ombudsman could not accept that because the complainant could not obtain the consent of the other signatory.”
“In anticipation of that, Deputy Doherty and I have separately tabled amendments, which will be dealt with later in a grouping, that seek to achieve the same thing the Minister of State is achieving here. This is a good initiative. It is positive and welcome, if belated.”
“We know from our experiences as constituency TDs and as spokespersons for finance the number of people across the country who have been damaged - families and businesses destroyed - because of the behaviour of funds and credit servicing firms that acted with impunity and simply could not be held to account by the FSPO because of this loophole in law, which prevented them from having a complaint about something a firm did prior to being regulated investigated. This is a very welcome development and something that was raised repeatedly on Second Stage. We requested that the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Chambers would come to the Dáil on Committee Stage to work with the Opposition or, indeed, to present his own proposition for how this would be addressed.”
“It is a pretty egregious loophole to which the Minister of State and Deputy Doherty have referred, where somebody who wanted to make a complaint about the conduct of a financial services firm, a fund or credit servicing firm and the complaint involved conduct prior to regulation, the complaint could not be accommodated by law by the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman. It is to the Minister of State’s credit that he has listened to the Opposition - finally, the Government has listened - and has addressed what is a very real problem for all too many people.”
“For what it is worth, I think Deputy Doherty’s interpretation is correct. I would also appreciate the Minister of State’s clarification on the matter raised by the Deputy. It seems to me there is a particularly broad definition captured in the amendment. If that is the case, it is very welcome. There was a very wide lacuna in the legislation that was identified quite some years ago by Deputy Doherty and others in opposition at the time. We have individually and collectively campaigned to have this lacuna addressed.”
“Ultimately, if we are to protect the hard-working public servants in these State bodies, we have to give them the systems and tools to allow them to deliver their work in a way that is efficient and gives not only value for money but also great service to the public, as most people in the public sector do and strive to do every day. That is something that everyone in this House should strive to do. I am not interested at all in going down a cul-de-sac as part of a blame game, but we clearly have a problem here, so let us work together to fix it once and for all.”
“Some of the same people who said back in the 2000s that we should have Michael O'Leary as Minister for Transport and Seánie FitzPatrick as Minister for Finance are the same people saying that business has the solution to all of our oversight and governance problems. It does not. There is certainly expertise in the business community that could be introduced to the public sector, and that has happened, to help us do things better, but it is not a panacea for all our ills. In the context of my response and that of the Labour Party to this motion, I do not want to feed into any kind of anti-public sector agenda that is out there. I would be the last person to do that.”
“On one occasion our new Tánaiste, then Taoiseach, who was once our Minister for Health, tried to distance himself from by far the greatest overspend in the Government's budget, which is the money-eating national children's hospital. I was amused to hear the Tánaiste opine last week on the issue of the X-ray machine in the National Gallery. He said he was furious. Somebody needs to remind him of the role he played in signing off on the national children's hospital initiative and the lack of oversight there. I say to the movers of the motion that if they look at the make-up of the board of the national children's hospital, there is probably a majority of people from high-profile business backgrounds on that board. That is something worth mentioning.”
“We do not want this new body to become some kind of Musk-inspired DOGE-like entity that sees the solution to every spending problem in the firing of the nearest available public servant. That will create more problems than it will solve. The danger here is that this is often viewed through the lens of an anti-public service and anti-public sector reactionary agenda. That should not be the case. With that said, it is a fact we do not do accountability properly in this country, and this has been shown in the way issues around overspends and lack of compliance have been handled to date. If we were in any doubt whatsoever about this Government's allergy to accountability, we need only have watched the election campaign debates.”
“A solution proposed by the motion is the establishment of an independent watchdog for Government spending. I have no objection in principle to exploring this but I have some concerns. Arguably, if the Department of public expenditure and reform, the Office of Government Procurement and the relevant individuals and divisions in Departments and agencies were doing their job properly, we would not be discussing this at all. We would not need that kind of suggestion. The solution is there already. There is oversight of this kind built into our system and my question to the movers of the motion is this: who would watch the watchdog? Would it be accountable to the Dáil? We are the people who hold Departments, Ministers and officials to account, and that is a principle we need to protect.”
“That is not to say that if we ascribe more responsibility to civil servants and expect them to put their hands up and acknowledge mistakes, we are letting a Minister off the hook. There needs to be a proper balance and a modern form of accountability that makes sense in 21st century Ireland, not in the 1920s. In recent weeks, overspend stories from the Arts Council and the National Gallery have dominated the headlines, but these are symptomatic of a wider problem across the system. This motion suggests there is a systematic dysfunction across government in public expenditure control. It is a very generalised and sweeping statement. I do not believe that is the case at all. There are some egregious examples that point to serious problems but fixing those problems should not be beyond us.”
“The way we do accountability in this country is not acceptable in this day and age. It needs to be modernised. The idea a Minister is accountable, literally, for every box of paper clips his or her Department uses is fanciful and outrageous. What we need is wholesale reform of the anachronistic Ministers and Secretaries Act and changes to the Carltona doctrine to usher in a modern form of governance and ensure those actually making decisions are made accountable. That is a modern form of accountability. The kind of accountability we do in this House, where hard-working public servants, some of whom may make mistakes, are hauled in front of the Committee of Public Accounts or the line committee for their Department, made an example of and publicly humiliated, is not accountability. Nothing changes. There is an innate unfairness there.”
“We should always be vigilant about the spending of public money and focused on transparency in decision-making, responsibility and accountability, not just at a time of fiscal crisis. A number of weeks ago I had an exchange with the Minister of State on the floor of the House during oral questions. We had an engagement on oversight and governance of OPW projects. The Minister of State mentioned some changes he was initiating with his officials. I welcomed this move at the time. He referred to the term "guidance" and said new guidance would be issued for the spending and management of projects. I would rather talk of rules, regulations and compliance than of guidance, which, for too many people, sounds woolly. I would rather talk, as well, of culture shifts in institutions and real accountability and making that happen.”
“Few things irritate members of the public more than the feeling their money is being wasted on trinkets or lost through bad practice. It is up to the new Government to get to grips with this issue quickly. All of us in the political system have responsibility to do that. Heads rolling without processes changing leaves us nowhere. There must be a root-and-branch examination of how Government spends money, particularly at a time when there is a lot of money to spend. At a time when coffers are full, the potential for waste is at its highest and the Government must be at its most vigilant. Unfortunately, we only seem to do reform and be interested in reform in this country in the context of a crisis.”
“The Minister of State was quoted in that article as saying he wanted to rebuild the brand of the OPW. He has a job on his hands and I wish him well because the hard-working people of the OPW do not deserve to become a byword for waste in the media or in this House. This is not just a people problem; it is a process problem. The processes by which the State and its agencies go about capital spending clearly need an overhaul. This is where our focus needs to be, instead of demanding heads on plates like some people on these benches will inevitably try to do. We were all out knocking on doors a few weeks ago and there is nobody in this House who did not have a constituent raise with them the bike shed or the security pavilion when we were canvassing.”
“There has been a fair degree of opportunism displayed in this House and elsewhere in recent times in respect of various headline-grabbing projects, but that does not mean criticism and critique are not warranted or that these overspends do not need to be addressed and debated. On the contrary, the public has a right to feel Departments and State bodies always treat public money with respect and ensure value for money. We are all well aware of the degree of public disquiet over this issue. In recent weeks, we had a national Sunday newspaper outline a litany of what it described as overspends on OPW projects. The Dáil bike shed on steroids is how the Irish Mail on Sunday framed a series of projects costing, it says, €50 million that failed to comply with the State's procurement rules.”
“-----for tabling this motion. It is not appropriate that we merely have discussions on Government expenditure occasionally when an Opposition group tables a motion. This matter must concern us all the time if we as a Parliament are doing our job responsibly and effectively. There is no need for me to rehearse the various overspends on OPW and other projects that have been interrogated to death in the media and on the floor of the House in recent weeks and which have led to this motion. I know from experience and the Minister of State knows very well from his experience that the OPW is a proud organisation with a long track record of achievement throughout the history of this State. I, for one, do not want to see the OPW, given the value of the work it and its staff do, become a watchword for waste and inefficiency.”
“The RSA since then has done absolutely nothing to identify a site for a permanent driving test centre in Ireland's largest town of Drogheda. The RSA is not being held to account. It is an organisation that feels it is accountable to nobody. The Minister of State has a job to make sure that changes and to ensure that the RSA does what it promised me, other Deputies and the people of Drogheda a long time ago, that it would develop a permanent driving test centre for Ireland's largest town.”
“Drogheda is Ireland's largest town that is yet to become a city. We do not have a driving test centre. We had a temporary driving test centre for a couple of years, located in a local football club. The RSA decided it would not renew that contract this time two years ago, leaving Drogheda without any form of driving test centre. What did it do? It blamed the local residents when an arrangement was to be made with all of the stakeholders to seek to extend that temporary accommodation to allow for the identification of a site for a permanent test centre in the area. You could not make it up. The RSA is effectively trolling my hometown. A young holder of a provisional driving licence living in the Drogheda area will be waiting eight months for a test in Navan and five for a test in Dundalk.”
“I would like a chance to respond but it seems we have run out of time. I did not even expect to get to this particular question, given the time allocated this morning. I wish to make the point, now that there are more Members present, that the reason we got to that question is because many Government TDs are not here to take their own questions. That is quite extraordinary considering much of the political debate in this Chamber in recent weeks has been taken up by Government representatives saying they will not have sufficient speaking time.”
“However, we need to agree on a core set of principles that would apply across the Civil Service and public service on approaches to blended, remote and hybrid work. Any initiative the Government undertakes or plans to undertake - I would appreciate it if the Minister put it on the record of the House when he intends to have this process completed - must be informed by evidence. Productivity, performance and all those very important things should be included and any examination needs to be robust and decisions need to be evidence based. However, I am not seeing much of that.”
“If I am reading correctly what the Minister is saying, he is comfortable with what the Department of Social Protection did in recent weeks, essentially instructing staff to come back to the office without agreement two days a week. By the way, that may seem reasonable to some, and I am not saying it is unreasonable. What is unreasonable is the lack of consultation and the unilateral nature of that decision, which appeared to blindside staff and their representative organisations, Fórsa in this case. Nobody has any difficulty - I certainly do not - with tailored, customised solutions to address the workplace needs and business environment in individual Departments and agencies because they are all different and all have different needs.”
“It is a very competitive labour market at the moment for the skills that are available in our labour market, and that will be very important as regards the ability of the Civil Service and public service to attract talent over the next few years. On that basis, pending the outcome of engagement with trade unions and the completion of the work on the framework, will Deputy Chambers, as the Minister with responsibility for the public service, instruct individual Government Departments not to change their existing frameworks and policies at least until such time as their engagement with the relevant trade unions and the completion of this initiative?”
“It seems to me that the Department of Social Protection jumped the gun with its solo run on this. It jumped the gun on the programme for Government commitment. Nobody has any difficulty with a review. The existing policy, though, has been in place only since 2022, and I would not advise the Civil Service and public service or the Minister to take any example from the code of practice of the Workplace Relations Commission that applies, for example, to the private sector. That is essentially a charter for refusal for workers who want to engage in more hybrid work and have more work-life balance in that regard. I said earlier that the public service should be an exemplar in terms of employment practices, pay and terms and conditions.”
“I would like the Minister to put on the record of the House the programme for Government commitment on the context around the planned review of the Civil Service blended working policy framework. As I mentioned in another context earlier, in recent weeks the Department of Social Protection, for example, went on what I might describe as a solo run and requested that staff return to the office a minimum of two days per week from this month. The situation has changed since, but I ask the Minister to elaborate on the current position of the Government, and on his position, on the commitment to a Civil Service blended working policy framework review.”
“The settled view seems to be that setting up a Department is complicated and it takes time, while the priority is delivery. What does the Minister want to deliver? What projects does he think this initiative will help him to deliver quicker?”