David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Gunning is appearing before the committee to deal with all these issues.

I will now address you, Chairman, because I am not at all happy with the letter we received from the Department either. If I am correct, we set out to both the board and the Department that we wanted this meeting to focus on two key issues - costs and timeframes. We received a letter back from the Department. which said it would not be in a position to answer any of those questions. We were sent very nice pictures of how the hospital might look, which is great. We received an opening statement that set out many of the services that will be provided, which we all want to see and welcome. That is fantastic. However, the issues we wanted to discuss were flagged in advance. Two days before the hearing we received a letter from the Department saying that it will not be able to deal with these questions, which I believe is unacceptable. It was right up to the clock in respect of when this meeting was to take place.

Mr. Gunning said he does not have to hand the information relating to claims that have been settled. He is here to answer these specific questions. These were questions that were put to him last November. We are back here in July and I am not talking about anything that I would consider to be commercially sensitive. I am talking about claims that have been settled. If he does not have the number of the claims or what the cost of those claims was, that is not preparing himself for a meeting with the committee when the committee specifically said the members wanted to ask questions on these issues.

When Mr. Gunning says it is a small number of claims, is it less than five?