Mr. Paul Sheridan:

That is an important point. The industry is not looking for a 100% recovery. Those concerned would normally have considered risk around this in their contracts. What they are looking for is a mechanism to recover some of the costs and share the burden. Everybody has to be realistic here; nobody saw the risks. The State, as an employer, never saw the risks coming. That is the reason for mechanisms and contracts allowing people to sit down, collaborate and reduce the cost of any fixes, but that cannot be done at the moment because the contract does not allow it. It tends to drive the recovery of costs into a dispute mechanism, which is what Deputy Canney was referring to, and suddenly one is into conciliators, arbitrators and lawyers. Unfortunately, the public works contract has a clause that denies the right of the contractor to take any specific issue directly to the courts or draw on court jurisprudence. We do not actually have a legal opinion on any of the contracts, which is not the case with NEC and FIDIC contracts, regarding which international law underpins what is said.