Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Question 30: To ask the Minister for Finance the construction projects to which he has committed or sanctioned during the past six months on a costs plus basis; the projects under consideration by his or other Departments; if he has set a date for the cessation of the practice of sanctioning construction projects on the costs plus basis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34460/08]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I have no responsibility as Minister for Finance for directly committing or sanctioning particular construction projects. This is a matter for the Departments concerned.

In relation to the cost plus form of contract, new Public Works fixed price lump sum contracts came into effect on 19 February 2007. As part of that arrangement a transitional period was included to deal with a number of projects in the pipeline that had advanced designs based on the use of the old contracts. These were allowed proceed on the old basis because to change over to the new contracts at that stage could have caused undue delay with project delivery. This transition period came to an end on 13 February, 2008 with the issue of the Department of Finance Circular 04/08 which states that contracts for all projects (other than those with a value of €500,000 or less tendered before 3 March, 2008) must from the date of that Circular (13 February, 2008) be awarded using the New Public Works Contracts or the Conditions of Engagement for Consultants. Therefore, use of the old forms of contract in delivering major new public service construction projects ceased from that date.

However, in order to deal with a specific further transitional problem, I extended the 13 February deadline date by a short period to 6 May, 2008 for tenders received before that date. This allowed a number of critical water services projects and a small number of school projects to proceed on the basis of the old contracts so that an undue delay in project delivery would not arise and the need to re-tender at possible extra cost would be avoided.

This was a once-off extension of the derogation and it will not affect the implementation of the new forms of construction contracts going forward.