Mr. Martin McGuinness:

The Deputy might need to refresh my memory on some of the questions. On the Deputy's first question, Dara O'Hagan was a Member of the Legislative Assembly. She became an adviser in the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister. She is a very experienced member of Sinn Féin. She is also a doctor and she is very well versed in economics. It was her view that the memorandum of understanding, MOU, was not something that I as deputy First Minister should sign up to.

The Deputy has to remember the context of all of this and how we were dealing with it in the North. The year 2013, when all of this began with a letter from Mr. Sammy Wilson to the Minister, was a very difficult year in the life of the Northern Executive. The reason for that was because prior to Mr. Peter Robinson going off on his holidays to Florida, I had a very serious conversation with him about moving forward decisively with the Maze-Long Kesh site. Maze-Long Kesh was to be, probably, one of the finest real estate areas in the whole of western Europe, one that obviously attracted a tremendous amount of attention because of the fact that Long Kesh prison was on it. The hospital where the hunger strikers died is there as well. We had an agreement that we would pursue, with the help of funds from the European Union to the tune of £80 million, the construction of a peace building-conflict resolution centre on that site. My side of the bargain was that I would agree to the move from the Kings Hall of the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society to Maze-Long Kesh. I kept my side of the bargain.

Mr. Robinson agreed, before he went off on his holidays, that he would go ahead with the construction of the peace building-conflict resolution centre. After he had been some days and even weeks in Florida, he sent a letter to his MLAs but not to me. I did not receive a phone call or message to my office. According to his letter, which found its way to the Belfast Telegraph, he was effectively reneging on the agreement made prior to him leaving. That brought about a very bad, even appalling, situation in terms of relationships because it was a gross act of bad faith on behalf of the DUP as a party. That presented massive difficulties for me, which lasted for a considerable period.

The question regarding this process starts with Sammy Wilson, the then Minister of Finance and Personnel. He never communicated with me at any stage anything to do with the sale of Project Eagle. In my view, all of his communications were through Peter Robinson. Sammy Wilson and Peter Robinson are members of the DUP so this was something they kept to themselves very closely. As a result of that, I found myself at a considerable disadvantage.