Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many people, including me, find this unusual, given the history of the Dunnes Stores site. That site was bought for some €5 million more than the previous valuation and here we are again talking about similar sums of money. There could be a wide variation in terms of valuation when it comes to a commercial property but it is not the same with houses. I can tell Professor Kilcommins what a three-bedroom house in the estate in which I live in or the nearest estate to it is being sold for. I can tell him what a four-bedroom or two-bedroom house is selling for. What I cannot get my head around as a layperson is the fact that the university ended up paying double the value of those 20 homes. Did that not strike Professor Kilcommins as odd? A very simple check on daft.ie or elsewhere on the Internet would have shown what houses were selling for in the area. Did he not find that odd at the time?