Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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There were specific concerns raised about it in this committee before the contracts were signed. I am not sure if it was raised prior to that because I was not a member of the committee at the time. However, concerns would have been expressed about the failure to provide the proper tendering process, the lack of public knowledge about what was going on and the fact that there was a compulsory purchase order. It would seem that in any sort of reasonable ethical circumstances, the first option would have gone to the person from whom the property was bought, if the authority was doing it in that sense and was trying to justify why it might be done without proceeding with full tendering. All these issues had been raised, but the authority proceeded with it. We had indicated at an earlier stage that we wanted to speak to the authority when the new Comptroller and Auditor General's report was presented. The authority signed it up prior to this meeting taking place.