CRH rules out involvement in Trump’s Mexican wall

Building materials group CRH has ruled out involvement in US president Donald Trump's plan to build a security wall along the country's border with Mexico.

CRH's Oldcastle unit, based in Atlanta, is the largest cement and construction materials group in the US. But chief executive Albert Manifold said the issue of the company participating in the construction of a wall along the 2,000-mile (3,218 km) border "doesn't arise" as the group has doesn't have any "significant presence in the extreme south" of the US.

Mr Manifold made the comments on a call with reporters after CRH reported a 41 per cent surge in earnings in 2016 before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, to €3.13 billion.

Last week, US Customs and Border Protection said it will start awarding contracts by the middle of April for Mr Trump’s proposed “great wall” to keep illegal immigrants out of the US.

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The agency said on Friday it will request initial bids on or around March 6th. Interested companies would have to submit “concept papers” to design and build prototypes by March 10th. The notification gave no details on where the wall would be built first and how many miles would be covered initially.

The project is “not of interest to us or relevant to us”, Mr Manifold said.

Still, CRH is expected to be among the main beneficiaries from hundreds of millions of dollars in planned infrastructure spending in the US in the coming years, in addition to Mr Trump’s eagerly anticipated $1 trillion plan to build and upgrade the country’s roads, airports and rail lines.