Mr. Steven Burgess:

I think, Chairman, that may be straying into area of policy but I would say there are discussions going on between ourselves and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on this very matter. It is probably not my place to comment on that, but we would be looking for any measures that would strengthen the availability and costing of bonds certainly within the public procurement context.

The Deputy also touched on something, of which we are also acutely aware, in respect of PPPs as public procurements. Our equity investors, who are the sponsors and leads, like to see very large projects but, with the diminished capacity we have in our market, contractors here would like to see much smaller projects. Again, we have to find a balancing act to structure deals such that we are attractive to both parties. It means we tend to make our projects slightly larger. One of the reasons for that is the transaction costs that go with PPPs. Generally, a contract value of around €50 million would be the bottom threshold. That obviously creates barriers to the participation of SMEs. To take 2007 as an example, that was less of an issue and there was plenty of work for everybody but that is not the case today. We have embarked on an initiative with Enterprise Ireland to look at ways in which we might offer greater transparency to the opportunities for SMEs within the PPP programme. We are trialling that approach through the devolved schools building programme, which is the traditional one. We, along with Enterprise Ireland, will host a market launch day for that programme next Monday and we will advise those who would participate in this that they would be required to participate, for example, in meet the buyer type events. We cannot force the main contractors to engage the SMEs but we can create the opportunities for people to be presented with a chance to talk to the main contractors and to-----