The half-year results from National Toll Roads once again showed what a cash cow this company is, running on margins that other companies can only dream about. The only problem that chief executive, Tom Roche, faces is spending all the money that NTR churns out!

NTR has flirted with all sorts of infrastructural projects - an east-west Dublin Port tunnel (rejected by the planners in favour of a north-south link), a landfill in Mulhuddart, the peat-fired station in the Midlands (since awarded to Finnish group IVO) and the proposed incinerator in north Dublin.

None of these has transpired, leaving NTR with little option but to hand over large chunks of its profits to shareholders in hefty dividends - £2.5 million in the first half from after-tax profits of just £4.4 million. But most analysts believe NTR would far prefer to pay a lower dividend and channel more of its funds into a long-term revenue-generating project, especially as the two toll bridges pass into public ownership after 30 years of operation.

Institutional investors - mainly the long-term variety such as pension funds - who invested in NTR when the East-Link bridge was being built many years ago have done very well out of the company and large dividends are attractive to pension funds.

But there comes a time when institutions want a market for their shares. A stock market listing is one obvious way to do this, but the institutional shareholders and the Roche family know that they will need another project with which it can go to the market.

A tolled motorway as part of a Public Private Partnership project would do nicely.

Or a contract for the tolling of the Lee Tunnel - nice for a start but not enough to go public on.