Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would. It depends on the nature of the contract and the level of certainty and risk. We have had road projects where parameters were set as regards design and the companies involved had to work within those. Any risks within those parameters were the main contractor's problem. This has shown up two possible alternatives. I am more concerned about the second of those alternatives than I am about the first. The first is that the contractor goes in low, knowing that it will be able to add extras. That is the general presumption. My concern is that the contractor in this instance has much of knowledge and experience of dealing with the public sector in Ireland and other countries. It habitually gets the design wrong. It covers precisely what it is asked to cover in the full knowledge that it has more experience than the people with whom it is dealing on behalf of the Irish public and that they will have to come back and correct their earlier mistakes and ask for work that they should have asked for upfront to be done. The contractor is very good at spotting where it knows it is getting designs submitted for tender.

I will provide an example. One guy in the industry told me that if one goes through some of these designs, one could find that a contractor designed a room without including a door. The guy putting in the tender has spotted that knowing full well that those requesting the work will have to come back to him to put in the door and he will charge a hefty amount for doing so. Much of this is down to the fact the design work done on behalf of the contracting body may not have been up to scratch at the beginning. The fault could lie as much with those on the public sector side not getting their house in order.