Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to end with a point with which I began, namely, the selection of Mr. McNamara and his role. I want to quote from The FitzPatrick Tapes by Tom Lyons and Brian Carey, to which I have referred in other committee meetings. Mr. FitzPatrick said:

There was little discussion at board level about whether Mr. McNamara was the right man for the job as his reputation spoke for itself ... Bernard was an established builder and developer. He had done a lot of successful work. He had dealt with the docklands over the years and seemed to have a good relationship with them. No one thought he was a difficult man or anything like that.

It goes on to say he was doing civil engineering and development, and seemed to be doing everything.

Ms Moylan has answered all the questions I put to her as well as she can. In order to get a full view of what has happened here it is important for us to get a full assessment of what happened. I agree with Ms Tallon. We should invite Mr. Bradshaw, Mr. FitzPatrick, Mr. Moloney and other members of the board who were involved at the time under discussion to come before the committee. We owe it to the people who have contributed to the hearings to date to gain a full understanding of what happened in regard to the selection of a developer and how there were such huge variations in cost while the Department had only a single figure that was substantially lower.