Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. I will speak to them twice because I understand they will also appear before the Committee of Public Accounts on 31 January. This was a major topic of conversation over Christmas and the new year when politicians have time to reflect and talk to people at length. This will be a case study for years to come. It will affect future projects, as the Chairman outlined, and it will have a considerable impact on future capital projects in health. I was a member of the Government that made the decision to build the new children's hospital and it was the right decision. I was a Minister of State when the then Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, and then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, allocated approximately €450 million for the project and I was part of the Government that made the decision to go ahead with the project. I would not have been part of a Government that would have made a decision to go ahead with a new children's hospital for €1.7 billion because the impacts on other health capital projects would have been so dramatic. We would have had to rescale and review the project and there is no way any Cabinet would have signed off on it in any way shape or form for anything near that figure or for even half of it.

I note the Taoiseach's recent comment, when answering questions about the hospital, that he had to choose his words carefully. He indicated he believed the costs should have been anticipated and noted that this was the first time this model had been used to build something like this. It was, he said, being done by a dedicated build board set up by legislation.

He said it was very disappointing that this had happened. That must concern the delegates. I believe the Taoiseach was being polite in his language because it was obvious to everybody in the Chamber and among the public that he was extremely annoyed. As legislators, we are extremely annoyed. Frankly - I am united with others in this - we will not stop until we get to the bottom of what happened. We must learn from it, but we must also have accountability, given the scale of the overrun. Members of the public are enraged and want to find out about the entire decision-making process.

Will the delegates remind us how the board is constituted? On the reporting mechanism, I sensed that they were very uncomfortable with Deputy O'Reilly's second last set of questions. Will they enlighten us on how the reporting mechanism works? I presume the board is constituted as a public entity. Is that correct?