The Government might have made a different decision on granting the contract to operate the national aquatic centre if it had all the facts at the time, the Tánaiste told the Dáil.
Ms Harney said she was not certain the Government would have agreed to a company with no experience. "We and others were led to believe, as deputies will note from the report, that this was a significant operator with 20 years' experience. But that is not the fact." Asked if the executive services contract would be reviewed, Ms Harney said the contact was between the CSID and the company in question.
"In the first instance, therefore, it is a matter for CSID to look at that contract. Now that there will be a chief executive, I imagine it would want to review that contact in any event. But even if there were not one, I do not think it is ever satisfactory that somebody should get a percentage of the cost of the project because there is no incentive in that kind of arrangement to minimise costs. It is clearly not a matter for me, and it is not a matter for the Government. But it is a matter for the board of the CSID."
The Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, suggested that that Ms Harney was misled because it suited the Taoiseach's purposes. "Not only was the memorandum written by Mr Paddy Teahon, as chairman of Campus & Stadium Ireland Development, it was presented in Cabinet by Mr Teahon rather than the Taoiseach.
"A decision was made on the basis of a memorandum brought in from outside by a former public servant who is now a businessman in the private sector. That is totally in breach of Cabinet instructions and the Tánaiste should be ashamed of herself to have sat there and presided over that with the Taoiseach. But it is principally the Taoiseach who is negligent." Ms Harney said that the Taoiseach had brought the memorandum to Government under his authority.
"The memorandum was not proposed by anybody other than a member of the Government, as the deputy is well aware. It was brought by the Taoiseach in good faith.
"At no stage, even when this matter was under close scrutiny three or four months ago in December of last year and January of this year, was the Government told the reason UK Waterworld had given 90 per cent of the contract it had got to operate this facility to Dublin Waterworld, a company which was incorporated after the tender had closed."
