Eammon Kearns, the newly appointed head of the PPP unit in the Department of Finance, plans to hit the ground running in his new post and have the pilot PPP projects operational in the short term.
He told Finance: ‘My job really is to drive the process here and make sure the pilot projects are delivered. The PPP unit here is working with other government departments to develop further PPP projects with particular reference to the private sector. We hope to bring to market actual projects in a shorter timeframe than has been done anywhere else.’
Kearns, whose background is in financial management, is a career civil servant and a former head of government accounting in the Department of Finance. There, he played a major role in the roll out of the new accruals based financial model and was heavily involved in the preparation of legislation which led to the setting up of the DIRT Enquiry by the Public Accounts Committee.
He said that developments in pilot PPP projects like the Waterford and Limerick by-passes were at an advanced stage and should be out to tender by the end of the year. Also, line A of the LUAS project is being procured, while there has been substantial progress on some pilot school building and refurbishment projects.
‘While it is true that nothing has hit the market yet, when you see where we have come from in the last 2 years, progress has been substantial,’ he said. |
