Mr. Pat Maher:

-----directly the price of oil, which is a byproduct of oil refining. For example, in the current year, we are seeing significant increases in contract prices and outturn prices. I do not have a figure for the Senator until we get to the end of the year and we can do that kind of back-analysis. That is a significant factor. The Senator will have seen, for example, the M50 during the summer. Substantial repaving work was done between junctions 7 and 10. That would have been subject to that level of increase. All of these issues have to be factored in.

There are other factors that people might not think about - for example, all of the signs, big and small, are aluminium-backed. A large proportion of the aluminium used in Europe came from Russia, which was one of the major producers. The price of aluminium post-Covid and post-Ukraine war, etc., has spiked significantly. All of these kind of factors feed into steel, which has spiked. I refer to safety barriers getting hit. They are supposed to get hit; that is why they are there, to protect from a worse consequence. The cost of maintenance on those has increased as well. In addition, labour costs are increasing. There are many factors. There are genuine increases in costs that are being borne directly by TII relating to those sections of the network that are managed directly by the organisation. However, we expect that the same kind of increases are being experienced by the toll operators and other PPPs as well.