Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many of us would be dealing with smaller contracts at a local level and there has been quite an amount of discussion on social housing units and things like that. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has made a provision whereby inflated costs will be borne between the developer and the awarding body to the tune of 70:30, where the developer takes 70% of the increased costs and the awarding body takes 30%. With a 10% inflation rate, that is much more burdensome on the developer than the contract we are discussing. Even within that context, there is a large bureaucratic process which the said developers have to go through to prove that they have incurred those costs. We are talking about a project of hundreds of millions and possibly billions of euro, which does not have those checks and balances. I will go back to my original question. Does the Department of Health think this was a good basis on which to sign off on a contract?