Mr. John Field:

I will try to be as brief as possible. My initial involvement in the transaction was on 15 February 2022. I was invited to a Teams meeting where the chief corporate officer and chief financial performance officer briefed four other people regarding the transaction and the proposal to purchase houses in Rhebogue. They indicated they had an interesting proposal they planned to bring forward and were seeking assistance from the point of view of due diligence work. I have a finance role in the university and have a role around capital and capital funding. There were no written papers at that meeting; it was entirely a verbal briefing. A number of attendees sent memos after the meeting in reply to the two proposers - that was the university solicitor and the director of commercial development and finance - outlining matters that had to be looked at.

The next meeting was called on 7 March, which I attended. Prior to that meeting, I confirmed with those three people whether they had received replies. No replies to any of the questions had been received. There was still nothing in writing. At that meeting, it was outlined that it was intended to bring the proposal to the executive committee the following week, to the finance committee of the governing authority the week after that and to the governing authority the week after that. I was extremely alarmed at that proposed timeline.