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Business of the House

I am aware of the considerable extra spending that has been made available in Northern Ireland to deal with a backlog of repairs and rebuilding in the education sector as well as in the health sector. It is important that we continue to use private sector funding through PPPs as a means of adding to the amount of capital spending that can be achieved. That has been successful, certainly in other parts of the country, and I am sure that it will be successful in Northern Ireland. Obviously there need to be proper checks and safeguards to ensure that that money is properly spent and is part of the overall Government spending alongside the private sector. From time to time that takes more time than would be the case if simple capital provision were made available, but the benefit to the whole country of that extra finance is that we can do more. We can rebuild and repair more schools, more hospitals and more public institutions.