Mr. Mark Griffin:

Let me go back to the sequence of events that the Deputy has described. He is right in saying the 2009 memorandum for Government included an estimate of €14.8 million, which, including VAT, was €18 million. One should bear in mind that was at the pre-tender stage. As one will find with a lot of contracts, whether they are in the public or private sector, it is difficult to determine precisely what the cost of a project is likely to be. The 2013 memorandum for Government included a cost of €25 million, again excluding VAT. That included the €9.5 million for encoding public sector body databases, which the 2010 consultation we undertook highlighted as important in terms of gaining traction, visibility and utility around the Eircode, and it also included costs for geodirectories. Including VAT, the €25 million cost was €31 million. It did not include, as a Comptroller and Auditor General has pointed out, our own internal staffing costs and some additional consultancy costs. The estimated cost, as set out in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, which we would not dispute based on his use of the methodology he used and which included staffing costs dating back to 2005 when the bulk of the work on this commenced, is about €38 billion, including VAT. To date, or at the end of December 2015, we have spent just short of €21.2 million.