Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would prefer to keep it with the Minister if that is okay. I want to talk about accountability because what we have heard here over the past few weeks has shocked me and many people. At €1.7 billion, the cost per bed will be more than twice as much as the cost per bed of the most expensive hospitals built anywhere in the world. Regardless of whether we use the Minister's figure of €450 million or the figure of €1 billion on an overrun, it is a vast amount of money to have overrun by with massive knock-on implications for the healthcare system. Does the Minister accept that this represents a catastrophic failure of financial management?