Ms Mary Harney:

No, the enthusiasm in the room was a result of the fact that we always wanted to get this site. It was our preferred site for many reasons. It is an iconic site. It is a riverside site. It is the premier site in Limerick. A property person said to me recently that if it had gone on the open market, there would have been a cat-and-dog fight for it. We were therefore excited that we now had it. At that point, after we got it, Limerick City and County Council dropped its attempts to have it declared derelict and put on the vacant site register. There was great enthusiasm, both within the university and externally. I do not think that the enthusiasm over getting the site took away from our responsibility to use our critical faculties and to look at the proposal before us-----