Ms Mary Considine:

My understanding is that we would have sought the funding. I suppose it is a matter of prioritising where the funding would go. My understanding is that the NTA would prioritise putting more services on rather than funding catering. From our perspective, we are looking at that and whether it is value for money. That is why we have not publicly declared a figure. We need to look at a commercial arrangement that would not cost the Exchequer the amount of money that that tender would have resulted in, if we had implemented it. We want to find a cost-effective way of doing this but we absolutely understand our customers' requirement to have catering provided, so we are trying to find an alternative way to do it. That may involve entering into a commercial arrangement with a third party or looking at it in a different way. I ask the committee to bear with us for a while as I work through that with my team. We will come back to the committee.

However, I hear clearly the demand from the people from the Senator's area.