Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

Haulbowline Island is situated just off Cork city. It contains an old slag heap from the days of the steel plant on the island. It is the subject of an environmental finding against Ireland because there is a danger of leaching into Cork Harbour. We have acquired the job of fixing that issue on Haulbowline Island, of ameliorating the site of the old steel plant itself and of rehabilitating some attractive old cut-stone buildings on the island. When that work is done we will hand the site over to the Department of Defence because the main occupant of the island is the Irish Naval Service. The Government has approved a plan costing €64 million for total works on the island. We are currently working through that. There has been some advance in the project with a tender put out, to which there has been a response, and discussions are continuing with the chosen tenderer on the costs of the most important parts of this work. The committee is seeing some of the very early costs mainly around planning and engineering expertise costs, but there will be a peak in the work on Haulbowline, due to fall around 2017-18, and after that it will trail off to nothing as we complete the work, and happily hand the whole thing over to the Department of Defence.