Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Earlier Mr. Costello explained to a member of the committee that the quantities had been wrongly calculated to the tune of hundreds of millions of euro of taxpayer's money. Hundreds of millions of euro was added because the amount of materials needed to build the hospital had been underestimated. When it was sought to pull some of the costs back, amazingly, mistakes were not made in the other direction. Some €65 million in cost savings were sought, but less than one third of that figure was identified. For example, if commercial companies were estimating the amount of equipment needed to build a hospital and it turned out that they had massively underestimated and given per square foot estimates half of what they are now, would any of these issues trigger legal or commercial conversations where very serious mistakes had clearly been made in design? It appears that underestimations were made left, right and centre in terms of what was required to build the hospital.