Mr. Peter Walsh:

We have been using advisory speed limits, but the legislation was signed by the President last week so I think it is through.

The other element was - and this touches on the point about the contract that I was getting to - that we believe an equitable share of risk is desirable in public works contracts. Inflation had suddenly and dramatically increased, and in terms of some building products there were unprecedented levels of inflation. To expect the contractor simply to absorb those costs was so unfair as to make the contract form undesirable. We have seen fewer and fewer tenders for some competitions and we should be aware of that. We cannot build anything without contractors. We need people to actually go out and physically build the projects. We can have all the reports we like, but if the people do not go out and physically build the projects, we have nothing. We need to recognise that we cannot expect the contractors to take all the risk and tender competitively for it. We need a fairer form of contract. I think some move has been made in that regard. Certainly, there was a sharing of the impacts of inflation in a revision to the public works contract that was very welcome. It allowed us to move on the pavement programme last year where there was an unwillingness on the part of the pavement contractors to tender because they were so worried. In previous years, a three-month period would not have been a worry to them, but the way prices were going in terms of bituminous products, they were worried, so that helped.

We have a derogation from the Office of Government Procurement for the use of an internationally recognised contract, the new engineering contract, NEC, form of contract, for Cork to Ringaskiddy. Cork County Council, with our support, will commence the seeking of expressions of interest from contractors for that. It could be indicative of how attractive it is and how it is perceived within the industry because we need to do something about recognising that the industry is losing interest in building infrastructure for the State from the point of view of roads. There are other jurisdictions, and we have recently had some contractors whose corporate boards decided it really was not worth their while taking on the risk so they withdrew from competitions. In recognition of that, we would like to see more flexibility and fairness brought into contracts.