Sacked Bermuda Housing Corporation general manager Raymonde Dill has defended the $810,940 payments made to contractor Paul Young, the man nicknamed "the man with the golden paintbrush".

He said Mr. Young was not just a painter, but he worked with a team of young men who also fixed buildings as well as painting them. Mr. Dill said the payments to Mr. Young were all above board, although neither men in interviews with yesterday's Bermuda Sun could give detailed accounts of how the 21 cheques for $810,000 were spent between May and November last year.

Mr. Dill told the newspaper it was "unrealistic" to ask small contractors like Mr. Young to provide detailed explanations of how they spent BHC money.

"The record keeping for a small contractor is not likely to be able to produce the detailed analysis people might want project-by-project," he told the Sun.

"Information is available on salaries paid or on the amounts paid to subcontractors, but that would cover multiple jobs. It's unrealistic to ask a small contractor to to provide `job costing' at the level requested here."

Mr. Dill said Mr. Young made a profit of around ten-14 percent on the jobs which was not high for Bermuda.

He said Mr. Young and his team of young men - including some from dysfunctional families who would be considered unemployable - worked on large projects like Middletown that had 15 units, Prospect which had 30-40 units, and Top Square, St. George's which had 35 units.

Given that the work included roof repairs, exterior woodwork and sometimes masonry work which Mr. Young had to subcontract, the bills were not inflated, said Mr. Dill. Mr. Young, who spoke out for the first time since the scandal broke six months ago, said he did not get the contracts because his wife Dale Young was a close friend of Premier Jennifer Smith. He said he worked with teams of 13-16 people. "We didn't just paint buildings, we basically restored them.

"We did masonry work, carpentry work. With Bermuda buildings you are talking about cracks, priming and waterproofing, a whole lot of different things, not just painting. I subcontracted work out."

When asked to account for how the money was spent, he told the newspaper: "To sit here and say how much paint I bought or did I put a few dollars in my pocket or steal this or that, for me to try and convince you what the paper (Mid-Ocean News) said was junk, I don't have the energy for that."