Mr. Peter Finnegan:

The project was led by the OPW in conjunction with the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. The project itself was a restoration project rather than an improvement project of Leinster House. When the project began, Leinster House was in a really poor state of repair. There were major issues with fire compartmentalisation, structural issues with floors and stonework issues. The big priority of that project was to restore the building so that the building could be used again by everybody, safely.

If we were to have taken on some of the disability works at that stage there would have been some issues around planning permissions, which would probably have delayed the restoration works. Given the urgency in relation to such issues as fire safety, we could not actually do that.