Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have serious problems with that because we are in virgin territory here in that we have never done this before and that is why the phrase "best practice" is not applicable here. I do not accept that this is international best practice because of the circumstances in this case. When it comes to best practice, we are not comparing like with like. It is not apples and apples and oranges and oranges, it is a completely different jurisdiction so there is no best practice. This is the first time ever and to be frank, we obviously have failed massively. There are learnings here but best practice does not cut it. The line that is being thrown out at political level to the effect that we are delivering the best children's hospital also does not cut it because the consequences for other capital plans and for people's health in this country are catastrophic.

I will come back on this but we need to get into the decision-making process to proceed with BAM based on the fact that it was so far under everyone else in its pricing and the escalation of costs that has resulted. The €983 million did not include ICT, electronic health records, EHR, family accommodation and a whole range of other things. Politically, I am not sure how aware people were of this. They were not aware of it in any way, shape or form. When an announcement was made that €650 million was to be spent on a hospital, that was seen as the cost of carrying out all of the work and cutting the ribbon and that is what people thought, including the witnesses. That is what at least 95% of the members of this committee and the public thought was happening.

I have a specific question on governance. On the actual specifications, Mr. Costello said in response to questions that the cost escalated because of the specifications, the requirements and the tightening up during phase B. How were the requirements for the scale and expense of the requests for facilities that were being put forward by the current hospitals that are a part of the group coming through validated? In future, I want to see each and every request and how it was validated.

I refer to the hospitals that are coming together to create this new hospital. They obviously have requirements and that is fine but how did we validate the scale, the necessity and the cost of same?