Public Private Partnerships in the Irish Roads Sector: an Economic Analysis

Rapid economic growth in recent years has imposed enormous pressures on the capacity of the Irish economy and brought the critical requirement for upgrading Ireland's physical infrastructure to the fore. As a response, the National Development Plan 2000-2006 (1999), which was published in November 1999, planned for an overall investment of €52 billion in the Irish economy with investment of €22.4 billion specifically earmarked for economic and social infrastructure. One of the prominent features of Ireland's NDP is the promotion of public private partnerships (PPPs). In the run-up to the publication of the NDP, the Irish government, in conjunction with business groups, actively promoted the use of PPPs as a vehicle for providing large-scale infrastructural investment. As a consequence, €2.34 billion of investment using the NDP was earmarked for procurement using the PPP model. The biggest element of both overall and PPP-specific investment within the economic and social infrastructure operational programme (ESIOP) of the NDP is in the roads sector. This chapter details the planned contribution of the PPP model to Ireland's road investment programme under the NDP. More specifically, it examines the experience with the PPP model in the roads sector in terms of the economic theories of relevance to the PPP model of procurement and explicit government objectives.