Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With the Cathaoirleach's permission can we take a bit longer? It is a charge the Deputy has made many times. I have no issue with the charge and I fully appreciate why the Deputy would make it. I will answer directly the Deputy's first question as to the timing of the meeting with Royal BAM. Then, rather than hearing from me about my involvement in the project, I will ask Ms Ross, as the chair of the board, for the board's perspective in terms of the level of interaction and the hands-on approach, or not. The committee can hear it from the person we charged with leading this on our behalf. On the question of why we reached out to Royal BAM now, it was for one very clear reason. Members will recall that we were all expecting to get the keys of this hospital in the coming weeks. When we were all talking about this at the start of this year we were looking to get them in the coming weeks. The view from the board, which is a view I agreed with, was that we needed to work with the contractor - and the board needed, on our behalf, to use the leverage available under the contract - to get the keys. As we know that date then moved to March, which we were all very frustrated with it. Then it moved to June and at that point one had to be careful.

As Minister, I have to be careful about intervening because one of the unintended consequences of doing so is that the contractor might think it no longer has to deal with the board as it now has direct access to the Government. In trying to help, I could end up cutting the legs out from under my people and I need to be careful about that. When I met the board recently, it is fair to say that its unanimous and strongly held view was that any attempt at partnership had run its course and a fundamentally different approach was required.