Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Seanad sent the Bill to the previous Dáil. As Senator Quinn would agree, this is a radically different Bill from the original. I agree with Senator Norris that it has taken too long. One reason for taking more time than expected was that this was the first legislation in respect of which a regulatory impact assessment, RIA, was conducted. All of the partners in the industry were involved in trying to tease out the problems with the Bill, which we managed to do in the course of the deliberations in the Lower House. The length of time taken was not for lack of trying on my part.

This important amendment is concerned with certainty about payment for the small guy, as it were. Mining and exploration do not fall within that definition, for which reason we have excluded them. I would have hoped to be in a position to return the Bill before now. I am sorry it was not done in that way.

The second grouping relates to amendments Nos. 3 to 6, inclusive. The main element relates to issues raised in the context of the consultation process that formed a part of the Bill's RIA. The RIA examined the experience of adjudication in other jurisdictions and found that, in the majority of disputes that used such processes, contracts were valued at between €13,000 and €65,000.

Therefore, the RIAI concluded that these thresholds were too high and should be reviewed or removed. The amendments included on Committee Stage in the Dáil removed the current thresholds from €200,000 for private contracts and €50,000 for public contracts and replaced them with a single threshold of €10,000. That issue came from the regulatory impact assessment, and Senator Quinn was supportive of what we had to do in bringing back those thresholds to the minimum €10,000 level.

In this regard, I note there has been some confusion about to what the threshold applies. The new threshold of €10,000 relates to the overall contract value, and therefore subcontractors will be free to refer payment disputes relating to lesser amounts to adjudication. For example, if a contract with an overall value of €11,000 gives rise to a payment dispute for €1,000, this will come within the scope of the legislation. The reason thresholds were included in the Bill was to avoid placing undue administrative burden arising from financial security provisions in an earlier form of the Bill. As there is evidence that obtaining such financial instruments would be prohibitively costly for the sector, these security provisions were removed from the Bill in the Seanad. The removal of the financial security provisions made it possible to reduce the monetary thresholds. It is important to note the threshold relates to the size of the overall contract; therefore, subcontractors will be free to refer payment disputes relating to lesser amounts to adjudication.

Amendment No. 3 is a technical amendment as a consequence of amendments Nos. 4 and 5, which relate to the removal of the two different thresholds that apply to State contracting or private entities. Since the new threshold of €10,000 now applies equally to public and private entities, the definition of a State contracting entity under section 1 is no longer necessary and, as such, has been removed.