Mr. Maurice Buckley:

They are the Departments of Education and Skills, Business, Enterprise and Innovation and Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The OPW has supported it in kind by providing architectural designs for the building. The history of this dates from the beginning of the century. A project was developed back in 2003 for Heuston Gate. The OPW had a huge development planned there and it proved possible, at the behest of the then Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, and Tánaiste, Ms Mary Harney, to include this science centre. It is a very worthy project, which links into our STEM education promotion and so on. The idea was that it would not cost the State any money and the building could be provided as part of the total development. So far, so good but unfortunately, when the recession hit, like so many Celtic tiger projects, the museum got blown out the window and could not go ahead. At that time, the OPW had umpteen projects in the heritage and cultural areas that had to paused or stopped. All of the different promoters went back to the drawing board, reassembled their teams, rebuilt their business case as well as the public and political support to go ahead with the project. For reasons best explained by themselves, the promoters of the national children's science centre chose a different route and pursued a legal angle in that they determined that they had a binding legal commitment from the State, through the OPW, and that seemed to be the case. The OPW then had to enter into a follow-on agreement in 2013 to provide a premises. We did that very carefully and located a premises in Earlsfort Terrace so that at least the building would be on a very important historical property owned, long term, by the State. There is a commitment to provide that building free of charge to the promoters of the centre. I have correspondence-----