Mr. Aidan Sweeney:

The key thing for that is to recognise that, yes, we can talk about investment in the procurement process and the different sort of procedures that are used, but we have to invest in the skills of procurement officials. I understand the Government is working on its new national procurement strategy. Our key point is that, across Europe right now, the number of bidders has fallen dramatically. When we come to a national development plan, we want to be as attractive as possible to get the right companies bidding for that work. We want an average of seven to eight, where it was, whereas now it is one to two across Europe. We need to get people bidding. The appetite and length of time of a procurement process is unlikely to encourage someone to bid because they are locking up many resources without a decision actually being made. That is just one element.