John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

For the benefit of the public, it must be stated that if one is involved in public life or in dealing with contracts for a long time, it can be easy to form the view that the State is always the malign player if things go wrong with a contract. I am not suggesting that there are malign players in this instance, but I have been dealing with school building and road projects in my constituency for long enough to know that contractors sometimes do not step up to the mark in the context of what they commit to. In many of the cases with which I am familiar, they absolutely squeezed the pips out of the boundaries of a contract and were very skilled and experienced at doing so. I am not suggesting this is the case here because I do not know enough about it, but it does happen. There always seems to be an assumption at meetings of this committee that the State has screwed up or behaved irresponsibly. There are at least two key players here.

One of the things we did not get a chance to tease out the last time because of a lot of noise and the time constraints was the position relating to the air conditioning grilles. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board provided a brief account that got lost. From memory, a change was suggested. The Minister might be able to comment on this. BAM suggested that this change was going to cost millions. It was also suggested that it was not going to cost millions. It was further suggested that it would delay the contract by months. Will the Minister provide a summary of the position in that regard?