Mr. Tom Costello:

To go back to the basis for going for two-stage tendering, internationally, and as is the case historically with major projects in Ireland as well, they are tendered in the traditional form, which means there is not actually cost certainty when one starts. What generally then happens - and this is not just in Ireland, but also in the UK - is that there is a confrontational approach whereby the contractor does indeed set out to recover from perhaps a very competitive tender in the first instance. Then one spends three or four years, at the end of which time one realises how much it has cost.

As for deciding on a procurement approach here, then, we spent at least a year looking at what is done internationally and what works best. At the time there was in government procurement a move towards design-build. When we took over in 2013 the intention was that the designers would be procured on the basis that the contractor would eventually be expected to do his or her own design based on an exemplar design from the designers. In that year we spent interrogating the best way to do things, we settled on the fact that design-build in this case, because of its complexity, was not the most appropriate form. In hindsight this has proven that there would have been no tenders if they were expected to fund the cost of a design. Indeed, in recent times, both here and in the UK, the whole design-build process, certainly in respect of how it has delivered schools, has been shown to have issues. In delivering a children's hospital, then, having an employer design was extremely important. I hope the Deputy can understand this background.