Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

I go back to the point made. The preferred bidder was accepted on the basis of a particular price. In the intervening period, particularly in the context of the global financial turmoil and the difficulty in getting finance, it was accepted that the cost of financing this and another project would increase.

On the reason the negotiations collapsed, as I stated many times in this House, I was not privy to the discussions. Obviously, I was informed as to the progress. No more than the Deputies, I was agitating to get this matter brought to finality so that we could get on with building the prison. There was an imperative in that there is overcrowding in our prisons. Despite the 400 places already built and ready for occupation in order to take care of the short-term issue in the next couple of years, I accept there is an imperative.

Even if the State was over a barrel on this matter, we were not going to pay out a blank cheque. It is the case that the annual cost, what is called the annual unitary cost, of this went up by more than 30% since 2007 to date. Although most of that was due to the cost of finance, it was not off-set by a concurrent reduction in construction costs.

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