John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Again, it is quite obvious that while the design team is not getting a percentage, it is getting paid for the extra work. At the end of the day the design team is not going to suffer any consequences for poor design or design omissions. The design team is going to be well paid for the work it does.

The question was asked as to whether the two-phase process was the correct way to go about this project and the answer given was that it was the correct way to do it.

The summary last week from the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board explaining why the board stayed with BAM described option 1 as not awarding phase B to BAM and retendering the project to the market. That would delay the project by a further two years. It would cause further construction costs of €305 million in addition to the €1.43 billion. I want to know how the hospital board came up with that figure. The summary refers to split contractual responsibilities for phase A and phase B, increased risk for project claims and so forth. By the board's definition, on the basis of the submission, it has more or less told us that there is no way anyone other than BAM could be used for phase B. Given the two options, option 1 and option 2, what the board has pointed out tells me clearly that the only option left to the board was to go back to BAM. The original reasoning of the board for the two-phase tender process referred to all the good things it was going to do. The result was that the company that got phase 1 was also going to get phase 2, it could do what it liked with the price and it did so.