Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I should acknowledge the work that the Deputy and the committee on transport have done on this issue over the last number of months. I thank the Deputy in particular, as Chairman, for that because I believe it helped to articulate the challenges that have been growing in recent months for the delivery of different public works contracts.

We have been assessing this for a while. We made an initial change in January and we made a further change in recent weeks in terms of the inflation co-operation framework, which has been broadly welcomed. There is a period of familiarisation required now in order that contracting authorities and contractors can understand the full detail of it. The Office of Government Procurement has done a great deal of work to provide guidance and supporting documentation and to assist all the partners in the delivery of the NDP to have a clear understanding of how this burden-sharing process is going to work. A small number of agreements have been entered into to date, and more are expected imminently. The initial feedback has been encouraging. That is the update I have received from my Department and from colleagues across Government. The fact that we included energy as well as construction materials and that it is backdated to the beginning of this year was very helpful. We are seeing a greater level of interest now in new tenders, which is positive, and we are successfully placing contracts. However, it is a very uncertain time for major contractors.