Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging the framework was the right thing to do. We were in a situation where builders or construction firms were unlikely to be able to complete projects because they were no longer able to complete them for the amount of money that had been contracted, as the increase in inflation had not been foreseen. This would have left us in a position where we would have to retender them and the State would possibly have to pay even more.

The feedback coming from the local authorities is there projects are no longer in danger and are going to complete. They have not been awarded extra money. We have not gone out to local authorities and told them we are increasing their budget to meet these; they must instead meet them out of their existing capital envelopes, though they have been allowed renegotiate the prices. It is not entirely the Government picking up the tab for everything.

There is risk sharing. While the State may pay up to 70% of the cost, the construction firm must take on some of what is there. We do not have aggregate data yet because we do not know at this stage how many contracts were affected and we will not know that until they are complete. Equally, each Department is responsible for keeping track of its own expenditure. The Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform looks at this at an aggregate level but we are not tracking individual projects. We are looking at the total amount of money that has been allocated to the Department of Education, for example, but not for an individual school it is building.

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