Ms Katherine Licken:

Increased costs have not necessarily materialised as yet, but we do know that we will be going to contract on a number of the projects.

For example, the Crawford Art Gallery project is at design phase now with a view to going to planning. We know the cost of material has increased considerably in the past number of years and we are anticipating cost increases as a result when we go to tender. Everything will go to tender in the normal fashion and investigative works are part of the process of finding the actual cost.

Many projects relevant to members of the committee have proceeded. For example, there is the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, the Tullamore arts centre, the Mary Robinson Centre, Ballina and Townhall Cavan. These are projects that have been ongoing and have not been necessarily impacted. There is also the Wexford Opera House development as well, which has €1 million for capital works. Mr. Falvey might speak further to this. We were kind of fortunate we were not at the construction phase in the big projects. At the same time there is an obvious impact. For example, personnel could not get into the National Library to do the on-site investigation works.