Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will tease out a few other questions with Ms Brogan because she is not in a position to deal with the public works contract in its essence and the problems the construction industry and, indeed, TII are encountering with the nature of it as it is currently formatted. Some of my questions relate to the jobs that are being put out to tender. We heard from the TII already, but the Department's spend is much greater than the TII spend. It has rail spend, aviation spend, spend on active travel and so forth that do not go through TII but go through the National Transport Authority, NTA, and various other mechanisms. Is the Department finding an absence of tenderers being willing to present and is it finding price inflation coming in? Clearly, an allocation has been given to the Department, but prices are rising and there is even a challenge with labour shortages and getting people to say they are available. I see somebody nodding, so that is a positive.

The challenge is that we have labour shortages and that is fuelling a certain element of price inflation in the labour market. There is also the energy crisis, materials and so forth that are all affected by the cost of energy in many cases and for other reasons such as supply and demand. We are talking about a €9 billion road allocation in the next ten years, with €5.1 billion for roads, €2.9 billion for road protection and €1 billion for PPP. That is just the road section. Obviously, then, there is the 2:1 ratio. Does the 2:1 ratio exclude the €2.9 billion? The €5.1 billion in roads new spend and the €1 billion in PPP new spend would suggest approximately €6.1 billion on roads. Would roughly €12.2 billion be a reasonable metric in public transport?