Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I find it interesting that when doing this, it is completely outside the realms of consideration for the Minister to contemplate whether the State should do things directly itself. It would not require a profit motive, potentially would be able to get things cheaply in bulk and would be able to borrow money more cheaply. There are all sorts of possibilities as to why the State, when directly constructing projects might end up with a considerably cheaper cost. Moreover, there might be better oversight of it because there are layers upon layers when dealing with outsourced projects to the private sector.

Somebody who worked in industry, not particularly a socialist incidentally, made another point to me. He said that in his experience, the main contractor gives a certain price but is getting a much cheaper price from the subcontractor and is loading on the profit margin for the job. If one went to the subcontractor, who ends up doing the work in any event, before the main contractor went directly to them, one would find a much better price.

Then there are issues such as quality. How forensic is the comparison between tenders?

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