Mr. Robert Watt:

Let me repeat what we said earlier - the Deputy may not have been here - the contracts committee granted a derogation. It is chaired by Mr. David O'Brien and there are people from different sanctioning authorities on it. It is not the only derogation to be granted; there were ten projects in the past few years in respect of which derogations were granted. A derogation was granted from the normal lump sum contract because it was the collective view of those on the committee that it would not have been possible to deliver the hospital project within the timescale and have a competitive process for it on the basis of a lump sum contract, given the inherent risks involved in such complex projects. As Deputy Catherine Murphy mentioned, this goes back to the fact that when it comes to repeat projects such as motorway, school and primary care centre projects, we have a much better idea of the unit costs. We know, for example, that it costs €10 million to €12 million to build 1 km of a motorway.