Ms Carolan Lennon:

I believe he should have. We wanted to submit our submission and make sure he would raise these issues. He raised them and we then went ahead and submitted our ISDS. The next step was for the Department to issue the contract in the new year. We were hopeful that between the submission of the ISDS in September and the contract in the new year a number of our issues would be addressed. However, when we saw the contract in the new year, there were a few small changes, but none of the fundamental issues surrounding governance, cost and regulation had been addressed. The next stage which was due to be in February was to sign off on the contract. It was to commit to all of the commercial arrangements included in the contract, but we knew then that we would not be in a position to do that. We had been raising issues for 18 months and the bid was due to be awarded in April. We did not believe there was any opportunity between January and April for these things to be addressed because they had not been addressed in 18 months. Therefore, we made the unfortunate and sad decision to pull out of the NBP. That was the sequence of events.