The director of executive services at Campus and Stadium Ireland Development (CSID), Ms Laura Magahy, proposed revising her contract to include a monthly fee of €220,000 for the final years of the five-year deal.
Ms Magahy's firm, Magahy and Company, has been paid €127,000 a month since January 2001, despite the Government's decision a few months later to put the main part of the project, the stadium, on hold pending a review.
The €127,000 represented a monthly breakdown of 1.8 per cent of the total cost of the project, then estimated at about €440 million. This later increased substantially, to €700 million, meaning the monthly payments were to increase accordingly.
But Ms Magahy told the Public Accounts Committee she voluntarily offered to cap the fees at this level, regardless of whether the total project cost further increased.
Ms Magahy said she wrote to the board of CSID in May last year about revising the terms and made a full proposal in June. She understood the board welcomed her suggestion but she had no formal response since.
She told the committee she offered to cap the fees because of negative media comment about the 1.8 per cent arrangement. "I did not want the perception to be that it was in my interest to increase the project so as to increase my fee.
"It was in the interests of transparency. I don't do public projects for the money. I am interested in managing public projects. It's not simply about the money. I know people are cynical but it's as simple that."
Ms Magahy said the 1.8 per cent arrangement also worked to CSID's advantage because it only applied to the five-year period and she would not earn any more if she ran over time.