It's the same old and worn interview often used in healer DPS debates, I bet you stumbled over it at some point.
It's not 100% explicit, but it's easy to infer that he means "lower than the one assumed during development" in the last part, since an item level lower than is required to enter in the first place makes no sense, as that would mean you cannot enter. And since the two are explicitly different, that can only mean the assumed item level is higher than the minimum to enter. Which in turn also means healer DPS can be required to beat it. It's been chewed over numerous times.