Mr Paddy Teahon has vigorously defended his decision to award the contract for the building of the aquatic centre in Campus Ireland to Waterworld UK, a London-registered shelf company, and has reiterated that he will not resign.
He also said, as chairman of the company, he did not also want to be a full-time chief-executive.
In his address to the Public Accounts Committee late this afternoon, Mr Teahon said he apologised for any embarrassment that had arisen by his failure to explicitly use the word ‘dormant’ to describe Waterworld UK.
However, he said, he would not accept from "any source" any suggestion that there had been anything dishonest about his decision to award the contract to it.
"There has been no wrong doing involved," he said.
Mr Teahon said all 13 companies in the competition to build the centre had been rigorously scrutinised.
However, following an examination of the tenders by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, it was brought to his attention that one of the companies - Waterworld UK - was, in fact, dormant.
"I did not explicitly bring the word dormant to the detailed bid assessment panel’s attention," he said "because I [believed] that issue that I would have to deal with was the issue of their financial standing."
"The panels brief [on the other hand] was to determine the quality of the bids rather than their financial standing .I believe it is very important to underlined that fact for the committee [PAC].
"The brief of the panel at detailed-bid stage was to determine and to judge on the quality of the bids in particular in terms of the most economically advantageous bid and to make judgments on their financial standing.
"I did tell the panel - and I believe that that’s what is important - that there was a funding issue with this bid and that this would have to be dealt with.
"As I have said, because Waterworld UK was part of the consortium that had already pre-qualified and which had submitted a bid for our assessment . . .the panel judged that bid to be the best.
"I advised the panel in December [2000] - and I quote from a note that was prepared at the time by PriceWaterhouseCoopers ‘the Waterworld proposal was not the best funded and there were issues to be resolved particularly in this area with them’".
Yesterday, a draft report by the Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell SC, on the project was sent to the Cabinet.
The Minister for Sport and Tourism, Dr Jim McDaid said everything was found to be "above board" although there had been a "lack of caution coupled with some over-enthusiasm to get the job done".
Mr Teahon has repeatedly stated he would not resign over the affair.
The PAC is due to examine the report later this evening or tomorrow.