The situation in regard to the National Aquatic Centre goes from bad to worse. The disclosure on RTE news this evening that consultant engineers have found that the roof did not comply with design standards and building regulations and could have blown off at much lower wind speeds than those experienced on New Year’s Day is truly shocking and must raise fears about the safety of the building for members of the public.

I hope that these disclosures together with the graphic video of water pouring into the plant room will shock the Taoiseach out of his sense of complacency and that he will now abandon his ‘everything is fine’ approach. He should stop attacking those of us who have raised legitimate concerns about this project and tell us instead what he is going to do about it.

This project was built at a cost of €62m to the taxpayer and there was a general welcome for it as an important public recreational facility, badly needed on the west side of Dublin. However every stage of the project has been marked by an astonishing level of mismanagement and incompetence by those with the political responsibility for overseeing it.

The Centre is now mired in structural, legal and financial difficulties and is in danger of losing the confidence of the public. Ultimate responsibility for the Aquatic Centre rests with a company in which the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism are the sole shareholders. They must now live up to their responsibilities and start tackling these problems.