Mr. David Gunning:

I commented earlier that we cannot stop the contractor submitting claims. It is not something we can control. All we can control is how we respond to those and how we defend the public purse.

As the Deputy has mentioned, and I answered earlier, there are in excess of 600 individual claims with more than €200 million. I would characterise that there are some quite large claims of the tens of millions of euro and a large number of smaller ones for less trivial items. We are focused on, and some of the larger items are going through, the conciliation process and I guess we are in the middle. That is where things currently stand.