Professor Patrick Honohan:

A lot of things delay buildings. I am not blaming anybody but the planning process is long as is the tendering process. We might have spent more time than strictly necessary in our internal consultations with the staff to ensure that the building that is delivered was not the building Anglo Irish Bank would have wanted but the building that will fit with our way of working in the Central Bank. To me, it is as ugly as it is to anybody else but we should have the cranes swinging there in the new year. The big contract is out for tender now. Everything has been designed. Bits of the facade have already been put in place somewhere in Dublin and they may be going up fairly soon.