Mr. Mick Miley:

At this stage, we have provided a fair overview of what has happened, how it happened and how we arrived at this point. My mission today is to find out what members can do to ensure we get paid for works carried out. We are dancing around the edges, while legalities, barristers, pickets, financial statements and state of health are all issues in a big pot. The big question is whether the Government can stand over not paying us. Can it stand over skipping off out the back door and bringing in a new certifier to ensure we are not paid?

The Government, State and Department of Education and Skills are in control of some €250 million, which they will pay to a Dutch finance firm they engaged in the first place. It looks like they are trying to do as much as they can as quickly as they can and eliminate or ignore us. By doing that, they are ensuring the Dutch company gets its full and total payment of €150 million profit, subsidised by us who have paid our staff. It seems the Government also wants VAT from us. It is keeping our retention and for us to stay in business it wants us to keep the Revenue Commissioners happy by paying them money that the Government refuses to pay us. It is a naive of the Minister to choose not to meet us. The finance company does not want to meet us. We are being ignored. The Minister stated on television that the State was at no financial risk. He should wake up because we are contributing to his existence. We pay our way and pay Revenue and we did so through a bad recession, yet this is the answer we are getting.

We are not on trial today. All of us survived a recession when we were paid poor rates, had high costs and had to get rid of staff. As Mr. Kelly said, he had to let girls out of his office go. We are not on trial. All those who are hanging on to ministerial, departmental and Government stuff and trying to bypass us are out of order in the sense that not one euro of the €250 million has departed the coffers of the State. Meanwhile, €4 million is the figure bandied around for contingency works such as roundabouts, lead-ins, footpaths, gateways and entrances. Not one penny has been paid to the schools.

If the members do not have an idea how to help us, I ask that, before the Government makes any payment to any financier, it should create a contingency fund for people who have paid into the State but have not been paid for work on these sites. We are not looking for a subsidy or contribution like those paid in agriculture. This is not a subsidy but a reimbursement to people who worked and were paid for revenue that was paid to the Exchequer on their behalf. We are unpaid collectors of Revenue money. We have paid, otherwise we would not have our C2 tax clearance certificate or access code, as it is now known.

It is very simple. There is €250 million in the hands of whoever controls the project here, be it the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Education and Skills. That money remains unpaid. We have carried out work for which we have not been paid. We are not looking for delay money, penalty clauses or anything, just the price agreed on the day we qualified to do the job. If we qualified on day one, we are still qualified. We do not need to be court-martialled, assessed or certified and no verification is needed of whether we did it right or wrong. We were under scrutiny throughout the project.

We were scrutinised by representatives of Carillion which seemed to think it was a good idea to send them over to keep an eye on us. We passed that test and our work is done. Our invoices have been submitted and we are not paid. How will the committee ensure that we get reimbursed and not cost the State in investigative costs such as lawyers, barristers and going to court without the necessity picket a site? This is simple. How does one solve it without that necessity?