John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)

I am not sure whether time will permit another round of questions.

I have a few concluding questions to the Department in the first instance. To follow on from the deficit funding, it has now been established, not just over the course of our hearings today, but previous to these, that the crux of the issue was the underfunding of the delivery of homeless provision and the underbidding, which was alluded to by the Charities Regulator, in relation to the Dublin housing first tender. That tender had an estimated cost of €16.4 million. There was an underbid of 60% by the trust to deliver that service; the trust came in at €6.3 million. There was €10 million in the difference. Mr. Kelly said that maybe there were roles for the Department and other bodies in that, but how did an issue as blatant and obvious as that not set off alarm bells? Mr. Kelly gave some of the rationale, but did it not set off alarm bells when an estimated delivery cost was provided and what actually came in as the tender was an underbid of 60%? Did that not set off any alarm bells?