Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is very unfortunate that as a result of the collapse of the Sammon Group, 200 employees, and their families, have been impacted, as well as a number of subcontractors. It is a very serious fallout for those individuals. I have personally expressed my sympathy with them. We have 11 projects which we must now proceed to finish. Some are under the Dutch Infrastructure Fund, DIF, which has the responsibility for retendering. That is at a very advanced stage. In respect of our own school projects, we are drawing up the schedule of costs and will retender.

On the protections that have come into those school contracts, they are effective in that they have given subcontractors more rights but they are not 100% foolproof. They provide for more regular payments and they provide rights for the subcontractor to stop or block the contract. Those provisions are effective in giving more protections but as we have seen, they are not 100% effective where a company goes into liquidation.

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