Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Deputy Murphy that the Minister should appear before the committee. I spent four hours at the meeting of the Joint Committee on Health yesterday going through this issue. It was useful in terms of what the Committee of Public Accounts will be doing for separate reasons. Prior to the meeting, I was not fully aware of certain facts. The board that was set up is a publicly constituted board which reports to another board which reports to another board which then reports the Minister. The reporting line is that the chairperson of the board reports to another chair, namely, Mr. Dean Sullivan, who then reports to Mr. Jim Breslin who reports to the Minister. There are four layers and it is important that the people in charge of each layer appear on 31 January because that is the decision-making process.

A significant amount of documentation was requested at the health committee. I ask the clerk to contact the clerk to the health committee to obtain that documentation in advance of our meeting on 31 January. It deals with issues of great importance which this committee would examine such as the scoping of the project, financial decisions, tendering and so on. I ask that all of those relevant documents be provided to the committee. The meeting yesterday was quite an enlightening experience. Although there is a role in the matter for the health committee, there is certainly a role for this committee. This is the first time this form of build has been undertaken in this country. The chair of the board yesterday made repeated reference to best practice and stated that he would not change any of the decisions that were made. He stated that he was disappointed and that there were issues in respect of tendering for electronics, electrical work and so on but that he would not change any of the other decisions that were made. It is critically important that all of that documentation be provided in advance of the meeting. For information, the relevant figure is €1.733 billion.