Mr. Jim Breslin:

Let me give it to the Deputy. This is all within the responsibility of the Paediatric Hospital Development Board. The other entities such as the children's hospital were not involved in the commercial negotiations which were being fully handled by the development board. The Department was briefed in November, as set out in section 4 of the review of the escalation in cost. The Deputy will see from the note circulated this morning that the steering group, which is chaired by the HSE, met on 27 August. I came back from leave in the first week of September and was briefed at that stage. We had a board meeting on 19 September, at which we received a verbal update on the GMP process. We were concerned at that stage. When I came back from leave, my first impression was that it was a case of contractors doing what they had gained a reputation for doing, that is, trying to extract significant amounts from a process. That was my first, uninformed, view, but I set about informing myself about the process and went through it in detail with the board.

The users stated that they identified issues which had to be fixed. However, that is not the primary explanation. The primary explanation is contained in the figures set out to the committee today and regards the gap between the first preliminary design and the final design and the shift in quantities and omissions which then had to be costed in that process. Those costings were only coming through as the GMP process, which ran to November, was concluded. We were then in a position to make a fully informed recommendation to Government and did so in December.