Mr. John Crawley:

I was not involved in the initial appointment, I was simply an applicant to the tender process. From memory, there was a significant piece of work with the negotiation of what we now call the NAMA settlement, which ran on longer than six months. My firm was asked to continue with that work. There were changes of chief executives along the way and as I read the file in preparation for this meeting, it appears that under the previous board, mindful of the fact that under the Fine Gael manifesto, there was to be a wind-up of quangos, it was decided the board would continue to roll forward contracts. I think there is some reference to this, which may be in one of the reports provided. Discussion was had with what we now know as the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform but which was the Department of Finance at the time, on whether it was okay to roll those contracts over. As part of its hand-over to the current board, the previous board identified this as an issue. When the current board took over and asked for a transition business plan, which was prepared at the Minister's request, at that stage it was clear that this would take more than a couple of months to continue and therefore, it was put back out to tender at that stage.