Mr. Jim Breslin:

A table was shared with the Committee of Public Accounts last Thursday which I am happy to also share with this committee. In terms of the figure increasing from €637 million to €983 million, that includes the outpatient and urgent care centres, equipping, planning and design team fees, contingency and elements of VAT. We can work that up from the €637 million to €983 million for the Senator.

The final question was about what would have happened if the contract was awarded to the second bidder. The second bidder would have gone through the same process of final design and remeasuring of the bill of quantities. It would have been entitled to look for an uplift for the increase in quantities. It is not that in awarding the contract to the second bidder, whose bid was approximately €130 million above the lowest bidder, we were likely to get the product for that price. Once we started to adjust the final design and add in extra quantities, the second bidder would have been entitled to increase the price which it had tendered on a lower level of quantity.