Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. I note that a meeting is due to take place on Friday. We need absolute clarity at that meeting. This project cannot endure a further revised programme of works that the contractor will be unable to meet. Perhaps a hard decision has to be taken, but it has to be taken on Friday if we do not have certainty. I have read the long list of dates by which the school was to have been completed. They include September 2015, 2016 and 2018, October 2018, December 2018, and April, June and July 2019. This week we were told it would be signed off on in October and that in November students would move in. It is galling to drive by the site in the 21st century and see it being under-resourced. I drive by it every day and know that since the contractor signed the contract that it has been under-resourced. Even when blocks were being laid, there were not enough people available. There would not have been enough to build a 2,000 ft2 building on the site. That is why we are more than two and half years down the road since the contractor moved onto the site. It was to be a one-year, template-build model. My top political priority is to have the school delivered. I appeal to the Minister and his office to use every power available to them. Perhaps there is a global issue with procurement law that we need to consider. If a contractor is consistently behind and not meeting specified targets in the contract, he or she should not in any way be allowed to apply for other public contracts. We saw this happen recently when the HSE hired a contractor who had run into difficulties in delivering other contracts. We need a traffic light system ingrained in procurement law such that contractors can be excluded based on past performance and that if a procurement team excludes them, it will not lead to a court case.

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