Professor Shane Kilcommins:

I was appearing before PAC. It was my first appearance. Deputy Verona Murphy was asking me questions on the student records system and that is what I was appearing at the meeting to do. As I mentioned, I was asked to also deal with Rhebogue as a student accommodation issue and I have responsibility for students. In the days leading up to it, I asked for documentation, particularly with respect to the planning matter, so that I could understand what was around the transaction. I received those two dissenting planning opinions that I just spoke to the Chair about. I also received a very important piece of correspondence from 7 June. It was where the planning opinions had been sent to an external legal adviser to ask them to comment on which of the planning advices should be pursued. I received that letter. It was addressed to the chief corporate officer at the time and I then had that correspondence. I am not an expert on commercial transactions. The only one I have ever been involved in was this. What that brought to my attention and what raised concerns was that the letter was relatively agnostic. It went through the three opinions. It said that it was not conclusive and was open to interpretation.

For me, that information was very material and the decision-makers, both the executive and the governing authority, should have had that information in making the decision. When I came back from the PAC last year, I wanted initially to find out how this was the case and why it actually happened. Why was this information not before the decision-makers? I raised those concerns in written correspondence and at the emergency executive meeting that took place on 19 May.