Mr. Michael Kelly:

On the assumption that the train had stopped owing to a request about due diligence, one may argue that in terms of timing the two things coincided, but, in fact, I would rely very much on the account I heard from other external facilitators involved in this process at earlier stages to interpret what was really happening. My judgment is that in terms of mindsets about real, deep-down collaboration, there were problems on both sides. That has been confirmed to me by other people who were involved externally previously. I would not go with the simple assumption that it was simply about due diligence. Let me deal with that because I have a very strong feeling about this issue. In the context of the Dublin consortium, we have actually left that matter to item Z. It is way down the list. Why? It is because everyone is dealing with one another in the context of trust. Our expectation is that there will be open disclosure of relevant data, information and facts and so on between partners in a trusting relationship and that it should not be necessary to rely on very expensive third party examinations to surface data that should normally be exchanged in an open way between two institutes preparing to work together in a collaborative arrangement.

I would have serious doubts about the value of moving due diligence way up to the top of the queue because it would set off all of the wrong attitudes, questions and so on. As someone who has experience of change management processes, restructuring and mergers in other contexts, I would, in the first instance, be much more in favour of developing the foundations of trust and relying on normal processes of open disclosure, which come for nothing and do not cost the taxpayer anything, rather than relying on expensive third party processes to yield data that really should be exchanged openly.