Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What Deputy Donnelly has not heard from me today, and which he suggests he has heard from others, is that everything should have been done exactly the same as it was. I am not in a position to say that to this committee. I am not saying that to this committee. I am saying that I am going to follow the evidence in respect of what could have been done better. I do not think Deputy Donnelly is suggesting this, but it is not true that nothing happened between August and December, or indeed August and now. A number of reports were done. I believe a number of them have been shared with this committee, but if they have not all been shared, they should all be shared with this committee. I will make sure that happens because those reports do make points that, frankly and respectfully, are different from the points being made by Deputy Donnelly.

I hear regularly the reference the Deputy made to the hospital in Stockholm. We had AECOM undertake an international cost benchmarking study and it arrived at a different viewpoint from Deputy Donnelly. AECOM estimated that the cost of this hospital will come in at about €6,500 per square metre whereas an equivalent hospital to be built in London, for example, would come in at €9,000 per square metre. The study also stated that the national children's hospital comes within the range for similar projects, albeit at the upper end of that range. I am happy to share all that information. Much expert opinion was sought, before we decided to proceed with the project, to endeavour to debunk some of those concerns people may have.

There is a serious and ongoing effort to make sure that costs can be reined in without impacting on the integrity of the project. I accept that none of us wants to do that. We do not want to end up building a very expensive hospital and taking out some stuff that would have benefited paediatric healthcare. That is the balance we have to get right here. We are obviously contracted at €1.4 billion in terms of our capital construction costs as well. Perhaps Mr. Breslin might like to comment as well.