The most senior official in the Taoiseach's Department told the Public Accounts Committee he would have expected to have been told a dormant company formed part of the consortium awarded the contract for the national aquatic centre.
The evidence of Department secretary, Mr Dermot McCarthy, conflicted with that of Mr Paddy Teahon, who said he worked on the basis of "delegated authority" and did not consider it necessary to inform everyone involved of every detail of his actions.
When Mr McCarthy was asked if he thought he should have been told, he said: "I would."
Mr Teahon told the committee a second contract, awarded to Magahy & Company for executive services for the entire Campus and Stadium Ireland Development (CSID), was negotiated by him alone but was given the unanimous approval of the CSID board.
Both the Departments of the Taoiseach and Finance found out about the contract after it was awarded.
When asked about his duty to report to these Departments, which were the shareholders of CSID, Mr Teahon replied: "I basically did not feel I had to tell them."
Mr Teahon defended his approach, saying he had worked in Mr McCarthy's position for seven years, serving three different Taoisigh, and he did not believe any of them wanted to be told everything "at every single point in time".
"I kept them informed in an overall sense," he said. He handled matters for the CSID board in the same manner with its approval.
He rejected suggestions, made by Mr Pat Rabbitte TD, that one of the failed bidders for the aquatic centre should be concerned having delivered 10 boxes of files relating to their bid on a Friday night and the winner was announced on the Monday.
All bids had been thoroughly assessed, he said.
However, he accepted Mr Rabbitte's suggestion that it would be a better idea to split the duties of the CSID finance and audit committee. Mr Teahon said he was talking to an auditing firm about setting up a separate internal audit system.