Development agency 'by January'

The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, aims to establish the National Development Finance Agency by January 1st next year, despite virulent criticism from Opposition deputies who said the agency would create another layer of unaccountable bureaucracy.

Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said legislation to establish the agency focused solely on financing projects, when the problem was with project management. It would be a "new quango to do stunts that the Dáil will find extremely difficult to track".

Ms Joan Burton, Labour's finance spokeswoman, said the agency would become a "millstone" around the necks of taxpayers for years to come. There was "little merit in the proposal to manufacture yet another agency on top of the National Treasury Management Agency, the National Roads Authority and the Railway Procurement Agency".

Introducing the National Development Finance Agency Bill in the Dáil, Mr McCreevy said the legislation would establish a finance agency to assist in "providing cost-effective finance for public investment projects".

The objective "will be to ensure overall best value for money and encouraging the maximum private sector involvement in financing projects". One of the requirements in the Bill is that "State authorities will be obliged to seek NDFA advice. However, an important consideration is that they are not obliged to take it."

As well as "maximising value for money for the Exchequer", the NDFA would provide advice to State authorities to evaluate financial risks and costs of infrastructure projects. In some circumstances it would raise finance for projects including public-private partnerships, "where this would be more cost-effective than private funding".

But Mr Bruton said the Bill was "poorly thought out". It did not address core problems and "should be set aside until we get a more robust assessment of what has gone wrong with the National Development Plan".He also criticised as unacceptable what he described as "the banning of the new agency from commenting on any hare-brained idea that emanates from a minister". If the State was handing over public money to this agency, "then we must hear if it has hard talking to do about mad schemes from ministers".

Officials who were responsible for putting financial packages together should not be prevented from "expressing strong views to the Oireachtas". This was foolish and the Minister was attempting to circumscribe accountability to the Public Accounts Committee.

Mr Paudge Connolly (Ind, Cavan-Monaghan) described the Bill as a valuable contribution to the "expeditious and cost-efficient completion of priority infrastructure projects".

The Green Party's finance spokesman, Mr Dan Boyle, said the agency was being promoted "because it is nothing less than a wheeze, it is a deception".

Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said social housing was an integral part of infrastructure and was a problem that had to be grappled with. The National Development Finance Agency "provides the means".