Mr. Peter Walsh:

With regard to profit before tax, eight companies returned profits and three returned losses, and some of the profits were quite marginal, for example, Waterford bypass had a profit of €912,000. From these records, we can see that these are not making a huge amount of money and at least three are returning losses.

On the arrangements that were put in place for these contracts, if we step back for a moment, it was a Government decision to get private money into the funding of the roads programme. We do not comment on the justification for anything around that; it was a Government decision. We put in place contracts and we managed to get private funding into the construction of those roads. They formed part of the overall inter-urban programme that was completed by 2010.

Whether they would have been built without that money or not, it is not possible for me to say, but that money was used, the projects were completed, the projects and contracts remain operative and everybody is fulfilling their contractual obligations. Those contracts vary in length, with one up to 45 years and the majority for 35 years. Nobody would enter into a contract without some form of indexation over that duration, so indexation had to be built into them, and that is the condition of the contract. Honouring those contracts is very important for the State in terms of our credibility. These were international companies which borrowed money to invest in Ireland's infrastructure and they have to pay it back over the period of the contract. We cannot take these commitments lightly and we do not. Given the performance of some of the PPP companies and their financial returns, opening up that contract may not work out very well for Ireland. Our advice would be to maintain those contracts and meet our commitments, and part of that is going to be the honouring of the clauses associated with indexation to pay for toll rates.

As the Deputy rightly stated, costs are going up, and they are going up for everybody. There are 250 people employed in those various toll operations, so costs are rising for them as well. Is that an adequate answer on why we believe the toll rates have to go up?