Ms Mary Hayes:

The Deputy is correct. There were lessons from that. In the tender, there was probably too much focus on the ultimate cost. It outweighed every other criteria in that housing first tender. There has been learning from that and we have adjusted to make sure that if the DRHE is tendering now, the ultimate cost is not the only consideration. We would put more weighting on the other factors.

The other issue for us was that there were other credible bidders that were substantially below the cost. There is no doubt that there was an over-reliance on allowing fundraising, which we have since addressed.