Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will consider this matter and hold people to account at an appropriate time when this process is no longer commercially sensitive. I refer to a contractor putting in an inordinate number of claims against a State entity trying to deliver a project for the State. In that regard, Mr. Gunning has to come in here to carry out this aspect of the battle in public, but representatives of the contractor do not. We must put this pressure on the witnesses and it is totally appropriate that we do so. However, I do not want Mr. Gunning, for the purpose of fulfilling his accountability obligations, to have to behave in a way that results in costs being driven up, such as might happen by setting a target for the final cost for the hospital, for example. I want to know how much the hospital is going to cost, but not if that figure then becomes a target for a contractor instead of the cost that will represent the best value for the State. Is that the case, or am I just way off base here?