Mr. Lar Bradshaw:

No, that would be unfair. As I said in my opening remarks, I am trying to achieve a balance. The decision was made with all of the facts and imperfect information we had available in 1998, as I said in my opening statement and as is stated in the appendix to the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The benefit of the decision was that we spent €70 million and made €200 million. As a result, we were ahead economically, which is what stated is on pages 62 and 63 of the report. We were up by €130 million, not taking into account all of the other things done that mattered most to me and delivered our metrics. When the committee comes to its conclusions about how to describe what we did in those ten years, including the loss of €52 million which I acknowledge, I ask it to try to put it in a broader context. I am not trying to say we did something once and that, therefore, we did it again. I ask the committee to have a balanced view of the overall performance of the authority. In the real world one has to make decisions, often with imperfect information. There are a number of criticisms made in the report. Could we have done more? Yes, we could have. Should we have sought a formal valuation and paid €50,000 for it? Yes, we should have. However, one has to make decisions with imperfect information and one lives or dies on the basis of them. I ask the committee to take all of the decisions made over the ten years into account.