Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Mr. Watt. I express my disappointment at the comments attributed to him earlier today in the media.

I do not consider a colloquial expression of that nature to be helpful and it is unbecoming of a person in his office. That being said, we are here to discuss Government contracts and in particular, the contract for the national children's hospital. Hindsight is wonderful, of course, but from my perspective there are two flaws with that particular project, the first being the fact that it was two-stage and the second that there were additions and problems on site which have pushed the total expenditure up. I am not sure that any Government Department was equipped with the necessary foresight to be able to determine that these problems were arising. That is glaringly obvious when there are changes made to the manner in which Departments operate in terms of the note that Mr. Watt has provided to us in his opening statement.

I have five specific questions. On the two-stage tender process, I do not understand and, to a certain extent, I do not accept that there was not an element of foresight in terms of understanding the difference between the two-stage process in the context of the ability of the Department in question to obtain a competitive tender on the basis of the complexity of what was being done on the ground. As someone who worked briefly in the formwork business, I cannot understand how on earth a secondary company would be able to walk on site and say that it could tender, based on what is in the ground or what was supposed to be put in the ground, as per the original contract. How was that considered appropriate? Was there any knowledge in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform that this was the nature of the contract? Perhaps Mr. Watt or Mr. O'Brien could answer that. Was there anyone with the experience to say that it could not work for various reasons?