Mr. Aidan Sweeney:

What it has done is that it has weakened the appetite to invest in bidding for work. The statistic refers to 294 days after bids are submitted, but the bids could take a year or a year and a half to put together. The investment to put together project teams and respond to detailed plans involves a considerable cost. Therefore, the question for us is whether we can attract enough people to bid for our projects such that we will end up with competitive bidding processes ensuring value for money. The key point is that those concerned are reluctant based on previous experiences. Contracts used to be awarded and were then cancelled, but bidders will have gone through 295 days. The projects might not have been progressed at all, just cancelled.