Mr. John O'Connor:

The agency knew it was going to make acquisitions. It engaged with the Office of Government Procurement about the engagement of solicitors. The Office of Government Procurement said it was setting up a framework and would prefer us to use that framework in terms of engaging solicitors. It confirmed that it expected to have a framework in place by a certain time but the framework was not in place in sufficient time and we had run out of time to go through the full procurement.