Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

My apologies for being delayed. I was at another meeting, but I did read the opening statement. I take the point that the witnesses are not here to politically defend strategic, economic or political decisions to go down the route of using public private partnerships to provide public infrastructure. The Carillion collapse blows a massive hole in some of the arguments that have been used to justify PPPs, in particular the argument that they transfer risk off-balance-sheet. The reality, when a PPP collapses, is that the risk will come back on-balance-sheet and the State would be better off building directly.

What the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA, does have responsibility for is defending the decision to go ahead with Carillion, given the political choice to proceed with PPPs. The witnesses indicated that the NDFA did not rely only on Carillion's audited accounts and did its own due diligence as well. What was the latest date at which a contract was awarded to Carillion?