Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Why does the Minister keep trotting out the sale of Shanganagh as an excuse for allowing the taxpayer to be ripped off in the purchase of Thornton Hall? I do not understand how it is all right that we paid €200,000 an acre for farmland because Shanganagh was worth a lot of money. Does this mean it does not matter that we were ripped off in this fashion?

With regard to the work that was to go ahead on the site, is it the case that the Prison Service sought additional construction valued at €30 million and that the preferred bidder was prepared to bear this cost? Is it the case that the preferred bidder submitted slightly altered specifications that would allow the price to come in at €40 million less while maintaining the standard of the recent extension to Maghaberry Prison, but this was rejected?

Why is the Minister defending the purchase of this farm? Was this not, as I said the last day, the biggest claim jump since the Yukon? Why should we spend €200,000 per acre for farmland in a rural area? I saw the cattle grazing on the site when I went out to visit it. It is beside a small rural school with seven or eight houses around it in a typical rural setting. The people who did such things and spent the kind of money the Government spent over the last 15 years should themselves be candidates for incarceration. It is outrageous.

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