John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have already heard that BAM, the contractor, priced a particular change at €25 million and said it would take months to complete. It eventually cost €200,000 and was done in a matter of weeks. That was stated on the record of this committee. I share the view expressed by Deputy Cullinane about it being unseemly and unedifying. The public is aghast. However, there is another aspect that the public should know. As a public representative, I am aware of contractors who were granted contracts by the State and who had to be chaperoned on a daily if not an hourly basis, and I am not talking about BAM. They attempted to cut corners on the contracts they were awarded. Were it not for intense project management oversight that consistently pulled them back and reminded them of their contractual obligations, they would have driven a coach and four through the terms of those contracts. While I am not saying BAM has done this, some contractors have done it with State contracts. It is not acceptable to do that with taxpayers' money, but certain contractors getting State contracts do it repeatedly. We need to have some kind of system in place to understand why they repeatedly are awarded contracts.

There are typical concerns around those projects to which I refer. I know of a school project where the contractor used materials and fittings that were inferior to those that had been agreed. That type of thing is only discovered when every room is inspected in detail. Is that the kind of detail we are talking about? The public are hearing that some of the rooms were inadequately fitted out or whatever. Will Ms Ross to flesh some of that out? I do not want to spend too much time on the matter.

It always seems to point to the State being at fault here. I am not assigning the comments I made about the contractors on other contracts to BAM. However, is this the kind of thing we are talking about? Stuff is agreed but when it is inspected, it is not passing muster.