I first want to associate myself with the remarks that the Tánaiste has made just now on the treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Government.

The commitments made to our national recovery include one of the largest tranches of capital investment ever announced in the State. Some €10 billion is to be spent on capital projects this year with Government projections indicating upward momentum in capital spending, with an additional €15 billion to be spent by 2025. This is great news for every child in substandard classrooms, every patient in substandard hospital settings and commuters on substandard infrastructure. This money must positively impact every Irish person. Getting to this position is a political and social achievement brought about by national sacrifice, by seeing through a decade of financial hardship and hard choices accepted by our population.

Few Governments in the history of our State have ever been in a position to give the people of Ireland the services they deserve in schools, universities, hospitals and clinics, housing and municipal infrastructure and investment in the arts, sports, roads, cycleways and railways.

Indeed, few Governments have also had the ability to address so positively the challenges that climate change is presenting to our society and ultimately to our economy.

This money needs to be spent wisely and well. That will require political discipline, oversight and scrutiny, as well as tenacious and vigilant project management. I contend that the methods of oversight used thus far are not up to the task. The Committee of Public Accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General, good as they are, are no match for the scale of ambitions and responsibilities in spending this money. Covid spending has taught us strong lessons regarding the difficulties in making good investment decisions when urgency and large capital outlays combine. We will be back in the ha'penny place in no time if we fritter away this money on political codology, vanity projects and, possibly, stroke politics.

My constituency of Waterford has suffered as a result not having had political clout for most of the history of the State. In saying that, I am conscious that my election as a Deputy comes from the anger in Waterford and the south-east region at not having the services that are normal in other parts of the country. We have been losers in the race to the Cabinet table, having only had three senior ministries in the past 33 Dáileanna. Maybe we will get our elbows in at Cabinet again, but I would prefer if we evened up the game.

The real problem is that we cannot see where money goes. The simple act of presenting historical capital expenditure on completed projects in the form of regional and county-level analyses would transform our national understanding. I believe such a reporting standard needs to be made a national priority. The country can have mature conversations about capital allocations and equitable investment priorities but, in so doing, we need to have oversight and adequate understanding of how decisions on capital spending are made. I hope this is something the Tánaiste can consider implementing.

The Government is engaged in a huge programme of capital investment in public infrastructure under the banner of Project Ireland 2040. It is €10 billion a year, money which we may struggle to spend this year because of the delays in construction but still a massive budget of €10 billion a year. It is the biggest ever investment programme in public infrastructure, creating jobs all over the country and providing new public infrastructure for citizens. It is social housing, for which there is a budget to provide 9,000 or 10,000 houses a year, new schools, hospitals, healthcare centres, sporting infrastructure, community infrastructure, renewable energy, retrofit and the national broadband plan.

Like all other parts of the country, Waterford benefits from this investment, such as through the investment in the North Quays, of which I know the Deputy and I are great advocates, the investment in University Hospital Waterford, where the Dunmore wing is now open, the second catheterisation laboratory is at long last under construction and the national broadband plan, which will be of particular benefit to rural parts of Waterford. The greenway has been built and is a huge asset. In the not too distant future, we will have the technological university of the south east, centred in Waterford city. These are significant investments by Government that I believe will help to transform the region, particularly Waterford city, making it the capital of the south east and attracting investment, jobs and population. That is the vision we have in Project Ireland 2040 for Waterford city and the south-east region.

In terms of the Deputy's remarks regarding transparency, I think he is probably right. This is a significant budget of €10 billion a year. There may well be, and I think there is, a case for further transparency as to how the money is spent and how we make sure it is spent well. I know the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, will welcome any proposals the Deputy has in that regard. I would like to see Government doing detailed analyses of that because one thing such analyses would show is that the idea of having a Cabinet member at the table is probably overrated in terms of the amount of capital investment that a particular city or constituency gets. Maybe things used to work that way but they do not do so any more, particularly with the public spending code in place. Some of the analyses that are done by interest groups and academics are misleading. For example, they will exclude any investment less than €20 million or less than €50 million. Of course, in areas with low population and rural areas, investments tend to be of smaller amounts. They are spread more widely. That creates the false impression that urban areas are doing much better than rural areas. Also, it does not fully take into account, for example, the value of nationwide investments such as road maintenance, research grants or the national broadband plan. I know different countries use different models. There is a state agency in Australia that is in charge of capital development there. There are lots of good ideas and I would certainly welcome hearing about them.

I would be quite happy to sit in on Cabinet meetings to see whether not being at the Cabinet table has an influence. I believe reporting from Departments is inadequate for the House to discharge fully its responsibilities of budgetary oversight. The Government needs to do more in terms of demonstrating equitable investment decision making and providing the evidence that supports it. I point out to the Tánaiste that Dublin has one quarter of the population yet it receives approximately half of all capital investment. I also point out that I recently tabled parliamentary questions regarding €998 million of capital investment by the Higher Education Authority in the past decade but the Department was unable to provide me with a breakdown of projects supporting that spend. We do have an issue in this regard. I certainly look forward to engaging with the Tánaiste and the Minister, Deputy McGrath, and maybe coming up with further initiatives that I hope would help us to share the burden and to shed light on these decisions.

I broadly agree with the remarks of the Deputy. We do, of course, have systems to monitor capital spending, not just the Committee of Public Accounts but also the Comptroller and Auditor General, although that is largely retrospective, and also the Project Ireland 2040 delivery board. There are mechanisms in place. Could there be greater transparency or can they be improved? I think they can and I would very much welcome any suggestions from the Deputy in that regard.