Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On that point, he also states that ultimate responsibility for this would lie with him. We are told that in February and March of this year, the value of claims increased by a further €31 million. That means a total of €585 million. From what I am aware of, any dispute that has been resolved has been resolved in favour of the contractor. It would be useful to get clarification on whether the contractor has lost any claims he has made. I am told that a number of them are on hold, for want of a better term.

We have accepted, and it is broadly accepted now, that the cost of this project is going to exceed €2 billion, although that was not acceded to by the Department or the Secretary General. Considering that we are not being provided with this information it is a fair question to ask whether there is recourse for us to force a Department to provide us with documentation that we have sought and that we think is important to our deliberations. I do not know if that can be provided to us here or whether we need to go into private session for the clerk to tell us, but I do not believe we can accept a situation whereby, whether it is a corporate entity or an individual, the public service and a Department are essentially telling the Committee of Public Accounts of the Dáil that they are refusing to provide us with information relating to the expenditure of hundreds of millions of euro of public money and that they will not provide us with that information until, essentially, the money has been spent. That is unacceptable.

On a further point, there have been reports of a number of arson attacks at the site in question. It would be useful if we could get clarification as to whether that will impact on the public outlay relating to the costs. For many contracts, if a contractor is undertaking works it is responsible for the security on that site while the works are ongoing. It would be helpful to get clarification that this is the case on this site or on whether insurance cover is in place to ensure there is no public outlay on that.

On a separate matter but relating to the same Secretary General, we agreed last week to write to seek clarification in respect of the timeframe for which he had waived a portion of his salary. Could we get clarification that there was no late correspondence in that regard and that we have not received a response yet?