Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and to the committee for facilitating me. I have a number of questions. I will direct the first to the Minister. I am one of these people who thinks there are two sides to every story. I have huge issues with BAM and how this was designed from day one. If we all went at it again we would not go at it the way it has been done. That is across politics and across everyone. We need to learn that this two-stage process for large-scale projects is just crazy stuff. I am one of the people who would complement the Minister on the fact that he went to meet Royal BAM. It was a good idea. I can understand why he did it late in the day rather than earlier, from a cost point of view, and not to build up leverage it had access to all the time. However, in the actual meeting, the Minister came out and said that BAM had agreed to June. I am delighted with that. However, were there any conditions attached to agreeing to June? For instance, was June agreed on the basis of there being no more design changes or was it June, full stop? The second part of that question is since Mr. Gunning and his team were in before this health committee a number of weeks back, and since the Minister met Royal BAM last week, how many design change orders has there been?