Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that. What interests me more is whether we can put a money amount on how much will be saved as a result of this. There is recognition from the CCPC that this is a serious problem. As Ms McNamara says, it happens with public contracts. It is not the fault of any one person or whatever. It is most likely because of the size of the contracts. Those contracts are so lucrative that it is certainly in the interests of people to ensure they get them. I will not put it any stronger than that. Has Ms McNamara an estimate of what kind of money we would be looking at saving if we could stamp out this practice? At the end of the day, the taxpayer is on the hook for many of these projects. Making it an offence is one matter but it would be interesting if we could quantify what the savings that might accrue to the State as a result of it could be.