Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It would not be easy to do. I wish to put on the record of this House that of all the land that was offered in that process and adjudged suitable the cheapest was bought. Whatever way one looks at it that is the case although different impressions have been given. If another option had been chosen would this House have congratulated me for saving a lot of money by putting a farming family out on the side of the road by a CPO process? Would this House have congratulated me if I came in here and declared that the only reason I was building a prison in a particular community was that the land came up at the right time for the official I sent out in disguise to purchase it on the sly? Would I have received brownie points for that?

I was recently in Belfield for a PSNI students Gaelic football match and I reflected on the money that my distinguished uncle by marriage, Mr. Michael Tierney, put into the acquisition of that site. It was a significant sum at the time. The campus in UCD was built and the money spent on it seems worthwhile when one looks at it now. Similarly, the Irish Embassy in Paris on the Avenue Foch is a beautiful building in which I have been lucky enough to stay a few nights. There was an outcry when the building was purchased, although it is worth many multiples of its purchase value now.