Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Crowe asked about cross-Border projects, particularly in the context of health. The short answer to his question is "Yes". We are very interested in exploring new cross-Border projects that we could fund through the shared island fund. Some €1 billion has been earmarked for the shared island fund across the decade. So far, €250 million of that has been allocated and most of that has not yet been drawn down. Three quarters of the fund is yet to be allocated. We are interested in new projects and new ideas that we could fund.

We would love to be in a position to be co-funding them with the Northern Ireland Executive, if it was up and running, and the UK Government. I want to assure people that the announcements we are making, like the one we made the other day in respect of Ulster University, are ones we would love to be making alongside a deputy First Minister and a First Minister from the two communities. That would be much better than just announcing them as the Irish Government. Hopefully, we will get to that point in the next few months. Lots of interesting ideas and projects are under way, ranging from the Narrow Water bridge and the A5 to the Ulster Canal. We are working up our programme at the moment around educational disadvantage and how we might alleviate it in various parts of Northern Ireland. There are lots of exciting things that we are very keen to make happen.

From the Committee of Public Accounts's point of view, Deputy Stanley raised the issue of the national children's hospital. One thing I would say is that we should never lose sight of the objective, which is to build one of the best children's hospitals in the world. It will be one of the best children's hospitals in the world and, all things going to plan, will be handed over to the State next year and commissioned after that. A bit like a lot of major projects, whether it is the Dublin Port tunnel, terminal 2 in Dublin Airport, the Luas or Páirc Uí Chaoimh, there is a lot of angst and a lot of difficulty in getting them built, but once they are built and people see them and enter those places, nobody is sorry that they were built. I think we will get to that point with the children's hospital in the next year or so, but there have been problems from day 1 between the development board and the contractor. That has bedevilled the project, in my view.

Regarding the theatres, what I am told is that there may be an issue with 11 of the 22 theatres. It is not yet clear that any remedial work has to be done, but if it does have to be done, it can be done in parallel with other work and it should not delay the project or the opening of the hospital. I am going to dig deeper into that. It would not be the first time I have been told something in the health space that did not turn out to be the case. I have my team looking into that a little bit more to find out exactly what the situation is, but that is the reassurance we are getting at the moment.

I just want to join Deputy Ó Cathasaigh in welcoming the new policy on the islands. It was actually kicked off quite some time ago by Senator Kyne when he was a Minister of State. It is great that that is done now. The important thing now is to implement it.

On poverty, I have not had a chance to see the committee's submission, but if the Deputy could make sure I got it, that would be great. I would agree with the Deputy that, if we are serious about reducing child poverty – and we are – we have to deal with it where it is. It is particularly high among one-parent families and low-income families. There is lots we can do, for example, a move towards the living wage, which we are doing. The welfare package in the budget should reflect the objective of reducing child poverty. Reducing childcare costs is part of that, although we need to double down on increasing capacity. People being able to get a childcare place has become as big an issue as the cost of childcare. There is also the question of getting people into education and training as well as into activation measures. What the unit in my Department is doing is looking at the whole menu of actions that we could take and trying to find out which ones are the most effective and what they would cost. As well as that, it is having a look at all the pilots that have been done down the years – we are all familiar with some really good pilot programmes that have never been mainstreamed – and trying to identify a few of those that were very successful so as to make them mainstream rather than doing more pilots, if that makes any sense.