Mr. Tom Costello:

They would, because many of the additional costs here are in mechanical and electrical services. While we have had a lot of discussion about the main contractor and the fact that there was a competitive tender, a lot of the additional cost is in the mechanical and electrical packages. People should have comfort and we are happy enough to share this information. No more than the rules of EU procurement are very prescriptive, the rules around stage one and the bill of quantities, the development of the stage two process, and ultimately the finalisation of the contract price are also very prescriptive. The revised quantity in the bill of quantities is prepared again not by the contractor but by our quantity surveyor. The Senator will know that nowadays, with the benefit of building information modelling, BIM, and because of the complexity of this, the BIM model, in essence, takes the uncertainty out of it. The BIM model will prepare the bill of quantities in association with our own quantity surveyor so there cannot be arguments over measurements because the BIM model verifies the quantities. The ultimate quantity of every element of the job is absolutely clear. This really complex BIM model means that someone can press a button to ask how many single doors are required and that information is there. There is nothing ambiguous about this.

It is also important to note that of course there were some arguments, but within the contract it was agreed that the independent expert would adjudicate on those and his finding was binding on both parties. At the end of the list here is an amount of €22 million for the contractors' additional claims, but they are predicting all the challenges there will be on this project for the next four years.

Obviously, they are protecting their risk but, ultimately, a process was in place through the independent expert to deal with those.