Mr. Michael Nolan:

Yes, it does not fit. We see it as higher risk and we have to apply more diligence. That is why a different contract will come into play. The original point was about our system processes. We learned in the old days that we needed to deal with archaeology before the contract. We learned that we needed to deal with advanced works and services. We learned of the need to do as many investigations as possible. There are some things we cannot do because they have to be done as part of the main works. We get the services out of the way and we have a design-and-build formal contract. The contractor helps us to design. This goes back to Mr. Moran's point. The contractor is good at designing because the firm is good at managing earthworks. Office space engineers and people based in site compounds have different skill sets. If we marry the two skill sets together, we get a better result. We changed to a design-and-build formal contract in the early 2000s. That has served us well. We also standardised our standards. We standardised our bridges. Every bridge used to look different but now many bridges look the same. We now have thousands of bridges all with a design life of approximately 120 years. They are far more easily maintained and constructed. They are not feature statements for designers.

We also do more on the environmental side. We do far more balancing earthworks and use as many of the resources as we can on site. We minimise what is taken off site and minimise the material to be imported on site. That came from a long run of projects and hard lessons learned over many years. We have that now. We have a good deal of corporate memory. I worked with Mr. Walsh on a bypass 25 years ago. We shared the same desk on site. Many people in TII have been there through the bad days and good days. We cannot get everything right. If we did it would be impossible or we would not be trying hard enough. It is hard to get everything right in civil engineering. There are always new risks and things we have to figure out. Things are mapped through a site like services, for example. We try to deal with the services that we find when we do site investigation. To deal with services we have to have them mapped. When we go on site we find services that were neither mapped nor found during site investigation. It is all unseen. It is not like building a house where there is a small footprint. We have a huge linear footprint.

Another thing that is of great benefit to us - I have to acknowledge this - is our partnerships with the local authorities. That has been critical to the success of the work we have done during the past 20 years, as has the work we did with the IFA and the farming community in developing a code of practice. We developed the code of practice with the IFA and agreed it with Government and the IFA. That paid major dividends with co-operation from landowners. They allowed us to go on site to do surveys. They moved cattle when we wanted to do something on site. We got fantastic co-operation from the farming community. Without that I would say the roads programme would have lasted a further two or three years and would have cost a further €200 million or €300 million. I am sure there are other things.

This does not happen overnight. We learn and bring good stuff forward. When we start a big project or venture we start off by going over the lessons learned and how we can apply them. Dunkettle has all the hallmarks of all of these things in one location. There was one slip-up. We had rainfall in November 2015 or 2016. Half a lane got flooded in the tunnel and it brought Cork to a standstill. Public transport could not move. People could not get to the airport. People could not get home from work or schools. When 2 m of road width was removed from the equation on a dual carriageway, it caused chaos. Committee members can see how sensitive the location is. We could rush into this. We could have someone coming on site now but we would find all those problems. It is better not to put in an adversarial non-collaborative way of working. We may save money upfront and a small amount of time mar dhea, but we would pay for it in the long run.