Mr. Tom Parlon:

On housing, about 50% of the entire output we are trying to achieve this year is going to be State funded through local authorities, approved housing bodies and so on. With every one of those contracts, the same issues are arising. They were fixed-price contracts and they have been exposed to all of the inflationary challenges that are there. That has to be putting those particular projects in jeopardy. There is no question about it; they cannot be immune from what is happening.

In terms of the private sector, thankfully for the industry there is a lot of private sector work out there. There are a lot of big FDI projects and other types of projects. In those cases the same difficulties arise but, as with the programme to which the Deputy referred, people can sit down and discuss issues. Contractors can tell the clients they have come up against a problem, that the steel component of the project is costing an extra €1 million, for example, and that they cannot cover it, it was not expected and so on. The clients might decide they cannot afford to have the project delayed or deferred or to have the contractor walk away. They will engage two professional quantity surveyors. Quantity surveying is quite an exact science. They will agree that the steel price is X amount and that is what they will have to do. There is scope and flexibility to do that whereas, as Mr. Sheridan said, that flexibility does not exist under public works contracts at the moment.