Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Moving on to the matter of the children's hospital, the Minister is the guardian of the public purse when the Cabinet is sitting around the table. In April 2017, the Cabinet signed off on a tender of €983 million for the build cost of the national children's hospital. It would appear that, at some point around June 2018, the statutory board set up with responsibility for delivering the hospital learned that the cost would be higher than agreed. Over time, it learned the cost would be significantly higher. It appears the Department of Health, the Health Service Executive and the Minister for Health were not informed of that until late August 2018 and that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, who is in charge of the purse strings, learned of it in November 2018. While I accept the Minister's statement that this is what happened, for most people it sounds incredible that, several months after knowledge of these cost overruns emerged, the Minister with responsibility for the public purse had not learned about it. That is extraordinary. Can the Minister explain how that came to pass?