Mr. Mark Griffin:

One has to take account of the fact that CDM Smith is a massive company employing multiple thousands of people with expertise in a whole range of areas, including the area we are discussing and other areas such as groundwater and fresh water. It has already done a huge amount of work for the State on river basin management planning and so on and it has a broad spectrum of expertise. CDM is one of perhaps five or six organisations that will be involved in doing work in this particular area. There are mechanisms within the contract to ensure that, in the discharge of the work, where there are conflicts of interest they will be identified. I am not in the least bit uncomfortable about the fact that CDM is leading the team. We expect the team to bring to bear the range of expertise available to it in the areas required for the contract and to do so in the most professional of manners. We answered a parliamentary question on this matter in the past couple of weeks and the Minister dealt with it comprehensively.