Mr. Noel Waters:

Yes, there was. However, the advice available to us at the time on the nature of the contract was such that we could not take the next contractor on board. We would have run into very serious difficulties. Without getting into the complexities of it, the nature of the contract was such that we did not have that option available to us at the time. It gave rise to the loss that occurred. We greatly regret that, but ultimately had the contractor remained in business that project would have been finished and on time. He did not, and we had to deal with that situation. However, our main concern here is to ensure that we have a fit for purpose State pathology service, which we will have in a matter of months at the former Whitehall Garda station.

To return to Thornton Hall and the issues the Deputy raised, I made a few points about that at the start of the meeting but the Deputy might have missed them. My essential point was that the Thornton Hall project was driven by the need of the Department and the Prison Service to avoid the effects of the revolving door, of which the Deputy will be well aware as I know he has had a great interest in these matters over many years. It was an absolute plague on the Irish criminal justice system for many years. People were being brought into the system on foot of having been detected by the Garda, brought before the courts, charged and convicted. They were brought into Mountjoy Prison, because it was the pivotal prison in the system, and then released simply because there was no space for them. People who were involved in this at the time were conscious of that. It was a driving factor for them in terms of developing a new prison at Thornton Hall where the situation would never arise again. That was one of the factors in play.

Another factor at the time was the number of condemnatory reports that had issued in respect of Mountjoy Prison. The then Inspector of Prisons, Mr. Justice Kinlan, since deceased, had requested that Mountjoy Prison be torn down. He saw that it was not fit for purpose. The UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture over many years had examined the conditions in Mountjoy Prison and declared that they were not fit for purpose. The conditions were such that the committee was calling into question Ireland's commitment to ensuring that the human rights of prisoners were respected and observed.

Those were all the issues in the background which gave rise to the decision in the first place to proceed with Thornton Hall. Everything that happened afterwards flowed from those basic tenets. I accept that a very large amount of taxpayers' money has been spend on the Thornton Hall project. It was offset to some extent by the sale of Shanganagh Castle, which had outlived its usefulness as a facility for the prison system. It was hugely costly to maintain at over €100,000 per prisoner. At its closure I believe there were 20 to 25 prisoners there. It was no longer useful for practical purposes for the prison system. That sale generated €30 million and it practically paid for the cost of acquiring the site at Thornton Hall. There may have been a difference of a couple of hundred thousand euro. As the Deputy said, another approximately €20 million was spent in the subsequent period.

Of course it is a very serious concern to us that we do not have a prison or a project there, but ultimately it is a direct consequence of the collapse in the economy. Simply and straightforwardly, it was no more than that. There was no degree of incompetence by the Department, the Prison Service or anybody. The Thornton Hall process was fully compliant in respect of all the procedures that relate to public-private partnerships and the issues around that, including all the procurement issues, had the preferred bidder who was selected from three major companies succeeded in living up to their bid. Ultimately, they were unable to finance their bid because of the changing international situation. They were simply unable to access money markets at reasonable rates. However, had they been able to do that, I have no doubt that Thornton Hall would be built and probably at the point of functioning at this stage.

As I said earlier, there are very significant lessons to be learned from it. Looking at it again, are there other models we could have chosen? Again, with the benefit of hindsight, which is very easy, had we gone for the more traditional State construction using the normal processes with the Office of Public Works, OPW, would we have constructed Thornton Hall and would it have been completed? My answer, and I believe my colleagues would agree with me on this although I was not involved with it at all, is "Yes", a facility would have been built at Thornton Hall if we had taken the more normal route. However, at the time we had just emerged from a PPP project for the Courts Service which was not quite of the same capacity, although not far from it, and it was equally risky but it had been successful. It was delivered on budget and in time. At that stage, which was the mid-2000s, there was a fair wind behind us in terms of doing that. The Government decided, as it did on at least ten occasions, and the Oireachtas was involved, that Thornton Hall should proceed on the basis of a PPP. Ultimately, that changed in the latter part of 2009 and in 2010. The change was to proceed to direct Exchequer build. By then, we simply had no money to do it. However, that is a lesson for us in terms of the models we use.

Another lesson for us is whether we should be building in future in respect of the age of an institution such as Mountjoy Prison. As the Deputy is aware, it is 170 years old. Should we be building for a much lesser period at, perhaps, much lesser expense? That is a question which we address.

To take things forward, the Deputy mentioned the group that is examining a possible future use. We certainly cannot rule out the possibility that there will not be a prison constructed, or a requirement for a prison to be constructed, in Thornton Hall. That is certainly an issue. It will not happen in the short to medium term, in my view. However, if, for example, a new Administration decided to change the way people who are on bail are dealt with or change the nature of sentencing, that could change. Prisoner numbers have fallen remarkably.

It has not happened before on the same scale, but this could change and they may well go up again. This is an issue of which we must be cognisant and consider when making decisions for the future. With regard to the use of the facility at Thornton Hall at present, the group mentioned has been looking at potential options. Two issues are in play, one of which is that, as the committee may be aware, the approximately 800 people based at the Garda city centre offices in Harcourt Street in Dublin, who work in national support services and a range of activities central to the operation of the police force in Ireland and Dublin, are required to exit this office by the end of next year.