Professor Shane Kilcommins:

I am going to speak to that but the first thing I am going to say is that the approval took place in the governing authority on 3 August. On 4 August, I came to work and the university solicitor asked to see me as the contract needed to be signed. I am not an authorised signatory. As chief academic officer, I do not have the authority to sign but I was told that it was delegated to me by the president. The other person who could sign was the chief corporate officer, who is an authorised signatory. The president was on leave. I do not know where the chief corporate officer was but he was unavailable on the day.

It was explained to me that I had to sign it on that day as the planning permission was about to run out and the builders were going to move on to another project. I signed, as a delegated signatory, and did so with a memorandum from the external legal advisers to say it could be signed as agreed, that the full legal due diligence had been completed, that their construction team had looked at it, that it was appropriate for signing and that the adequate protections were in place. I signed on that basis.

With regard to the key point about the issue of knowing the price of property, what I would say is that at the outset the director of planning and reporting was flagging the issue of the costs of houses in Rhebogue in early March and was bringing this to the attention of the chief financial and performance officer, explaining exactly the point the Chair made. Again, that information never found its way into the approval process.