Mr. Peter Walsh:

In terms of the construction risk, I will give a couple of examples. The New Ross bypass was more than a year late in construction from the programme the contractor had originally presented and worked to, or tried to. It had various difficulties but it bore all of that cost. Until such time as that road was finished, the taxpayer paid nothing. So the availability of the road was key and it was up to the contractor to manage that, and it did.

I know from our own experience of design-build and in terms of the alternatives, we have gone through various contract forms. We would have had the third edition of the IEI contract first, and there were various clauses there for the claiming of additional costs associated with ground conditions, adverse weather and so on. We had FIDIC, which is an internationally recognised contract type that had areas of allowable risk, areas where the risk fell back on the employer - the State. Those claims were pursued in each case. We always pursued a policy of lowest price tendering so the lowest price won the contract. For that reason they have to price it optimistically. Even under the current public works contract there is a schedule K of compensation events, which if any of those events occur, the contractor is entitled to payment. Now all of that risk transferred.