Mr. David O'Brien:

There are measures that need to be applied consistently. We are engaged in a review of how capital projects are procured and managed under contracts. We are looking at all those aspects. The reality is there must be consistent application of these measures. If one contracting authority is particularly hot on one aspect and excludes a party because of that issue but nobody else is examining it or evaluating it in a different way, it leaves scope for a successful challenge to the exclusion. The metrics must be clear. The tools are in the contract through deduction of moneys. Grounds for exclusion are termination, damages or comparable sanctions under the EU directive's provisions. Unless those have been applied and upheld, if there is a challenge to them, there will be no evidence. Whether there is a national matrix or otherwise, if the applicant is following a tender competition, it must declare whether any of those grounds for exclusion apply to it. The database could be some sort of blacklisting system but, in reality, the system is set up so the applicant must inform us if there are any issues.