Yesterday, during Leaders' Questions, I put to the Taoiseach, as I have done before, data obtained from replies to parliamentary questions to demonstrate that the three successive Governments of which he was a part from 2016 to 2020 unfairly distributed public capital spending. Projects in Ministers' constituencies proceed while elsewhere they are stuck in the hell of public procurement. In his response to me yesterday regarding the south east, the Taoiseach name-checked some projects and intimated that I was wrong. To what percentage of the €12 billion in capital spending voted last year are the people of the south east entitled? What percentage, even a ballpark figure, does the Taoiseach think they probably got? The data I have show systemic long-term per capita underfunding in many areas, including acute healthcare, certainly higher education and almost every discretionary spending you care to analyse. As opposed to offering subjective anecdotes about equitable regional spending, I invite the Taoiseach to prove me wrong with verifiable data on this subject matter.

No part of the country is entitled to any particular amount of money. It depends on the projects and other factors. I will certainly look into the data. I do remember looking at some similar data in the past, but those data did not include projects of under €20 million or the national broadband plan, and it is not right to exclude those things because often it is the projects under €20 million that really add up: the schools, the sports capital and so on. The same thing applies to the national broadband plan. The Deputy might have new data, however, and I will certainly look at them.