Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will ask the Minister, Deputy McHugh, to respond directly to the Deputy on the school in Mullingar. Hopefully we can get that school open as soon as possible.

I point out that overall the schools building programme, the roads programme and the Irish Water programme are running on schedule and on budget. Of course, some projects are ahead of schedule and some are behind schedule. Within the confines of European law, we are examining how we might improve public procurement to allow us either to blacklist certain contractors, which is very hard to do unless there is a court conviction against them in which case it is possible, or to have our scoring system take better account of past performance or past underperformance. The Deputy should bear in mind that as a significant number of tenders end up in litigation, we need to get it right. The last thing we want is not to award a contract to particular contractors, have them sue us, delay the whole thing and then find they win.

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