Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Breslin can understand that is why I am actually more concerned about the PwC report about where we are from today to completion. What has happened is tragic. We cannot change the past but we can, to some extent, control what will happen from now on.

The most important thing is there has to be some absolute assurance in place for the future costs. We have completed our extensive work. We started at the beginning looking for basic information. We thought that was where we were starting. The witnesses have appeared before the Joint Committee on Health. Perhaps it was looking at the escalation of costs but we were looking at the status of the project and the issue of completion. I did not get to follow the detailed conversation. If some of it has been unnecessarily repetitive, I apologise to the witnesses but everyone has a slightly different perspective. I hope it will bring a bit of clarity.

Our main concern at the Committee of Public Accounts is that this major project has gone financially off the rails. The Government is talking about light rail and broadband plans, which are all in the billions. If this is the level of governance in the system for capital projects we will be back here despite being told it was a once-off, unique project that could not happen anywhere else. They could be saying the same about the broadband plan in a few more years. I worry about the management of capital projects. This may not be the only one we need to be worried about.