Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a PricewaterhouseCoopers review of the escalation of costs relating to the new children's hospital. Everybody has been fixated on the escalation of the costs but they are only part of the story. The overall costs are the bigger story. From the meetings of the health committee to today's meeting, bits have been added on. There are many excuses for why this happened but, as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, I am more concerned about how we get from where we are today to the completion of the project. I think this might be looked at to some extent in the review to which I referred. I would prefer, however, if PricewaterhouseCoopers had been commissioned to examine the €1.7 billion, rather than what has happened in the past four years. How valid is the figure of €1.7 billion? The Department has said it cannot confirm that the figure will not go over €2 billion and I know that nobody can answer that. The real concern of most people, however, is how high this could go. I would be more concerned to get assurances about what happens between now and the hospital being handed over as this is more relevant. Mistakes were made and learned from, such as missing things in the preliminary design, but it is more important to know how reliable is the estimate of €1.7 billion. Can Mr. Breslin comment on that? The Department should have commissioned a report on that.