Mr. Paul Maloney:

On 3 October, we had obtained an independent valuation in June 2005. We had our own RICS, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, professional surveyors in the authority who updated that valuation for the sub-committee, referred to earlier by the Deputy, of 5 October 2005 to do with the port’s involvement. We had a full valuation from an independent RICS valuer who put into that the entire parameters one would put into valuing a site. It included everything from office investment, income, expenditure, acquisition costs, construction costs, cost of debt, etc. We then asked our professional valuers to extrapolate three parameters, namely, plot ratio, the number of units per hectare and the comparability of sites selling in the area. In my opening statement, I mentioned that sites had just sold for between €40 million to €50 million an acre while we were bidding €20 million an acre. I had a team comprising a barrister who had spent 20 years working with the authority on property engagement, a finance director who had done all the development with IGB, as well as advice from Goodbody and CBRE’s valuation report. In the minutes of 3 October, the Deputy will note we took informal advice from the market.

Putting together all these parameters, I reported on 3 October that the site would vary between €300 million to €350 million in terms of the extrapolation of these parameters. During Mr. Bradshaw’s presentation, the Comptroller and Auditor General stated this was to become practice. These parameters are not put in by some amateur method but into an expensive computer program, the Circle-Time RICS program, which we had on site because we had a full development team. I was able to bring all of these criteria to the board that we were using and explain to it why it would vary.