More than £6 million was spent on consultants for the mini CTC project, CI╔ executive chairman Dr John Lynch told the rail signal inquiry yesterday.
Dr Lynch said that so far £11.5 million had been spent on the signalling system. Of that, £4.5 million was spent on outside consultants and the other £2 million on internal consultants.
He said it would take £35 million to complete the project and discussions were taking place as to how that could be done.
Labour TD Mr Pat Rabbitte asked if he would agree that good corporate governance seemed to have been stood on its head.
Dr Lynch replied that if one said good corporate governance was through the flow of information from the bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom, then the answer had to be yes.
Mr Rabbitte said the board was often kept in the dark.
Dr Lynch said that what seemed to have happened was that the attempted time-scale for the project was far too tight, the information flow from the engineers was inadequate and the board did not know what was going on.
Mr Rabbitte said only one potential witness did not make himself available to the committee on the basis that he was outside the jurisdiction.
It seemed he was the person central to the decision to abandon the mini CTC contract.
Was this person encouraged in any way? Mr Rabbitte asked.
"Not by me or anybody in CI╔," Dr Lynch said.
Asked if he had any idea why this person did not come before the committee and tell them about it, Dr Lynch said he had no idea as it was fairly straight forward as far as he could see.
The committee chairman, Mr Seβn Doherty TD, asked if he had heard the evidence of Mr Brian Joyce, his predecessor as chairman, who said he had no contact with the Minister for Public Enterprise. Was he surprised by this?
Dr Lynch said everybody had their own style but one had to get on with the minister as he or she was the sole shareholder.
"So, was I surprised? Yes, I was," Dr Lynch said.
He outlined changes that had been made in the companies. The method of payments to six people who had wished to keep their salaries confidential had been changed.