Mr. Robert Watt:

The reason the public private partnership market has improved is because of what has happened overall to the standing of the sovereign in the markets and because of the efforts of Mr. Brian Murphy and his colleagues at the National Development Finance Agency who have generated interest. We are now in a position where we are closing schools bundles and we have other projects.

I do not know the ins and outs of where we are with the project with regard to how much activity has gone out for tender. I do not think much of it has yet, and a significant announcement will take place this week or next week and a significant number of contracts will go out.

As I mentioned, we have done an enormous amount in ensuring contracts are available to SMEs and local suppliers. Circular 10/10 introduced fundamental change in terms of the reduction in the turnover and indemnity requirements. We are working with SMEs, business lobby groups and representatives on all of these aspects to ensure they can access contracts. As the Deputy will be aware, for the first time there are social clauses attached to school projects operated by the NDFA, including that a particular percentage of people employed therein must have been long-term unemployed. We will see how this works.

I am happy to discuss privately with the Deputy the contracts to which she referred, including the areas they are in, the tender documentation and so on. We encourage Departments to be sensible in how they procure and the requirements included in documents. We have seen a number which did not make sense in terms of their requirement that companies have a massive turnover relative to the size of a contract. When we see this, we recommend that a tender be reissued. The Deputy can bring the individual cases to our attention and we will have a look at them.