Mr. Stewart Harrington:

I will start by saying that we are fully aware of this. It might be useful if I give a little bit of context to this and fill in the background. If we go back to the original development of the hospital in 1972, an agreement was put in place with the Department of Health at that point in time whereby it gave a grant for the construction of the hospital and that grant was repaid over 30 years. In point of fact, therefore, the grant was paid off in 2001 or early 2002. That was the situation. When we received notification from the Eastern Health Board, as it was at the time, that we were going ahead with the new clinical services building, I expected that they would come up with some sort of mechanism to protect the State's interest. Normally, this should take place. I come from a construction and surveying background so I understand the process. I informed the board regularly that I could not understand why such an agreement had not been brought up. Construction started and took a number of years. I am sure board members will confirm that I used to report on how the construction programme was going, whether we were on budget, on target and so forth and I used to say that we could expect some form of a grant agreement from the Eastern Health Board at some stage and subsequently, by the way, when the HSE took over, but nothing ever happened.