Dr. Fergal Lynch:

I might deal with the Oberstown issue first and then go back to the procurement. On the issue of Oberstown Children Detention Campus, it was an extremely unsatisfactory experience. However, I know that a huge amount of planning and testing went into it because I spoke to the people involved. Mock-ups of rooms were tested, including the particular doors the Deputy referred to, by people who believed they met the required specification. Our adviser travelled to similar facilities for children in other countries to look at the most recent designs and that influenced the type of fit-out that was accorded to the Oberstown campus. Everybody who knew anything about this on the technical side signed up to it. The request for tender, RFT, was agreed for the specifications for the doors, etc., yet I agree with the Deputy - I was there on a number of occasions - that at the end, it could be seen that if they so wished, the young people there were able to severely damage the doors from the inside, causing serious potential harm to themselves, let alone the issue of security. It was extremely unsatisfactory.

Another issue that the Deputy has referred to is that for reasons I do not entirely understand, the door frames were not built on a uniform basis. When doors had to be changed, therefore, they had to be custom made, etc.