Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Brogan, Mr. Ebrill and Mr. Mullaney for appearing before the committee. This is very serious. There are four main civil engineering players in the Irish market at the moment. We are not too sure they are here and we are not too sure they contract. We do not want contracts stopping in mid-stream. What is happening at the moment cannot be allowed to continue. We need to see some form of flexibility in the existing public works contracts that takes account of the external inflationary pressures through no fault of the contractors. We will come back to the officials on it. Representatives of the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, will be appearing before the committee. We will be contacting the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform directly to ask representatives of the Office of Government Procurement to appear before the committee.

I thank Ms Brogan, Mr. Ebrill and Mr. Mullaney from the Department of Transport for assisting the committee today. We will now take a short break ahead of this afternoon's second session with Mr. Tom Parlon and his colleagues from CIF.

Just before we do that, I call Deputy Cathal Crowe. He dealt with Roadbridge. Perhaps he might clarify the point he made on subcontractors.