Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)

I thank Mr. Sweeney. Deputy Tóibín has indicated to be the first speaker. I have a few brief questions for the witnesses first. In the document they published, Our Infrastructure Ambition, they show on a chart the number of days to get from dealing with construction tendering practices to a decision. The average in Ireland is about 300 days. That is the same as Greece and a little bit worse than Bulgaria, whereas across other EU countries, it is half that time. Why would that be? One would have thought, once we got to the tendering stage, that we would be nearly there, but not quite there. Why is it, in the witnesses' experience? They must know from their colleagues in other European countries.

The big question I have is about labour force. There is money. Funding is available for investment. There are many reasons why there are logjams. Can the witnesses give an indication, though they might not have the information today, of the number of projects and the breakdown of the cost of the project between pre-construction and actual construction? That includes land acquisition. They might not have all that here today but I am sure they have information. We have seen with motorways and road projects that there used to be high construction costs. Now the cost of land acquisition, the non-construction parts and all the reports can be greater than the construction costs. By the time we get to the tendering stage, which is something the Government has looked at, 60% of the funding for the project might have been spent. What we hear when we get the final tender is whether we decide to go or not, but it is hard to abandon a project if we have already spent 60% of what the project is expected to cost. The witnesses might give us an observation on that.

Does IBEC have figure on the labour force? Its members are the employers so they should know. What percentage of the workforce in Ireland works in construction? Has that changed in recent decades? When I talk about construction, I am talking about the physical construction rather than the pre-construction aspect and the changing skills in that area. Do we have enough construction workers to do everything that we are going to do in the national development plan review? Do many of IBEC's members have projects overseas with Irish people who could come back and help with some of these? The witnesses talked about people coming here under the critical skills programme. They might address the labour force element. That is my last question until I call Deputy Tóibín. If the witnesses do not have the answers to hand, they can send them in writing.