Dr. Sean Sweeney:

With respect to cost, the costs that are in the public domain at the moment are based on the 2022 business case. They derive from a range-of-costs basis from 2014 to 2019 and were escalated to be used in that business case. They contain a lot of approximations. They were suitable for the purpose for which they were used. We have embarked on a comprehensive re-costing of the project. At the same time, the construction design is being completed. We are working in parallel with that. We are looking at a complete re-cost that will come out early next year. Even that will be based on earlier designs because the actual tender designs will not be complete until next month. A full costing exercise can take between three and six months and if we waited, we would not be getting a cost back to the Government until the middle of the year. We are looking at a greatly updated set of costs coming out early next year.

We are doing our review, to answer part of the question. An independent pricing firm is looking at our work as well. We are also engaging a firm called Oxford Global Projects to reference what we are doing against the cost base. We are doing all we could feasibly do to get a real and accurate cost at a time. I stress to the committee that in my experience, construction is a highly uncertain process. Projects such as this are of enormous scale and complexity, and it is beyond human comprehension to identify every risk and complexity in the pricing. There is always an element that will not be there. We are doing what we think is a very thorough job to present updated costs early next year.