Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 29 January 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

National Children's Hospital: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will not spend two or three minutes saying why we need the hospital, but I will spend ten seconds. If it is so obvious, why have we never done it as a country? Every politician of all parties has talked about it since 1962 but no one has done it. Sometimes the most obvious things need to be said. The other reason I say it, and I presume it is the same reason for the Taoiseach, is that I have heard well-meaning proposals in the House, which we have considered, that if implemented would delay the project.

On the apples and oranges comment, that was referring only to when people talk about the project from the period of 2012. That is talking about a different site, without planning permission or tenders and it ignores what has happened between 2012 and 2019 in the construction environment. It is fair to have a serious conversation about what happened between April 2017, when the Government signed off on this on my recommendation and sanctioned €983 million, and the end of last year, when construction costs had risen to €1.4 billion.

On how we did not become aware earlier, it shows that the governance structure worked because I became aware as soon as all the various structures became aware there was a problem. My Department did not dilly-dally in making me aware at the end of August that an issue was emerging, but it also did what I expect Departments to do, namely, due diligence and ensuring the expert reports were there in order that it could provide me with the best possible advice when I brought it to Government. I do not want the Deputy to think this was an easy decision. It was touch and go because it was such a large sum of money, but the other options did not bear thinking about it. We could have paused, and God knows where that would have brought us, retendered, which would have ended up costing us more, or variations in scoping, which, as the Secretary General explained well, would have given us an inferior hospital at a further date, possibly for more money. I am committed to building the project, as I know the Deputy is, and I did not see another way of proceeding. That is not to say, now that we know about the cost at this relatively early stage of the gross maximum price process, we should not consider every opportunity to rein back the costs.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.