Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and all of the witnesses for coming. I have looked at this in some detail and when it comes to the costs I believe that Mr. Costello and the board have failed completely and catastrophically in their job and their obligations to the State. The original bid from BAM came in at about €640 million. When the dust has settled, I do not think we are going to see any change from much less than €2 billion. When this is all done, I think the overspending will be somewhere between €1 billion and €1.5 billion - and it could be higher.

The fiscal space for the entire country last year was less than a billion euro. Think of the work, the analysis and the oversight involved in deploying that €800 million, or so, while Mr. Costello and his team in St. James's Hospital were spending more than that. As the Chair said, a Cabinet memo from December began to outline the costs of that. What will not happen includes additional hospital beds, new emergency cancer and cardiac facilities, primary care facilities, long-term residential units, accommodation in the community for people with disability, new laboratories, new operating theatres, investment in paediatric blood services, the second catheterisation laboratory in Waterford, a new emergency department and cystic fibrosis facilities at Beaumont Hospital and no development of appraisals and early planning for Sláintecare capacity projects until 2022 at least.

That is the reality of the incompetence and failure that I think we are seeing from Mr. Costello and his board in respect of the financial control of this project. He keeps talking about a figure of €890 million. The figure the Taoiseach gave to the Dáil was €1.433 billion and the memo which the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, presented to Cabinet referred to €1.73 billion. Can Mr. Costello tell us the total cost at this stage? I am not interested in phase one and phase two, above ground or below ground, kit out or commissioning. What will be the total cost to the State by the time the doctors, nurses and children actually get to walk into this hospital? Is it the €890 million that Mr. Costello keeps talking about, the €1.4 billion to which the Taoiseach referred, the €1.7 billion stated by the Minister for Health or, indeed, a higher figure than all of those?