Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will ask for the process of approval by the board or otherwise for the Bray Civic Centre and not just the rent-free period. We will follow that up. We will hold over this item because we are awaiting consent from the valuer. We will not publish that until we get consent.

The next item is No. 2012 from Mr. Paul Quinn, chief procurement officer of the Office of Government Procurement, dated 25 February 2019 in response to the committee's request for information on his role as a member of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board about the code of practice for the governance of State bodies and the role of the Government contracts committee for construction. We will note and publish this. He will be coming in with Mr. Robert Watt next week and we will have a detailed discussion. This is a comprehensive letter. I do not expect the public to read all ten pages of it but I want to make a few brief points in order that people will know what Mr. Quinn is saying in this letter.

He deals with the role of the Government contracts committee for construction and he states that, in this instance, it considered a request for a derogation for the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board from the standard form of contract. He refers to the standard form of contracts and deals with certain major contracts. He gives a timeline on the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board and confirms he is a member. In the first paragraph of his letter, Mr. Quinn states that he accepts in hindsight that, in his letter to the committee of 25 January, he should have advised that he was a member of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, having been appointed in a personal capacity by the Minister for Health in 2013. He states that is separate to his duties at the Office of Government Procurement. He accepts that the committee should have been informed in that earlier letter that he was a member of the board.

I want to highlight one or two other points. He states that there is a capital works procurement policy and refers to the capital works management framework, which consists of best practice guidance. As a result of this, we are asking the secretariat to ensure we have a copy of this best practice guidance in advance of next week's meeting. We might be sorry we asked for it but we should see it in advance of next week because it is important.

Mr. Quinn also gives the membership of the Government contracts committee for construction. There are 22 members on that committee to consider the various items. He gives a timeline in appendix summary 2, which we will publish. There is a summary of engagement between the Office of Government Procurement policy unit, the construction contracts committee and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board. In the second paragraph, he states that, from this early engagement, it became apparent that the scale, complexity and required delivery time associated with the hospital presented a range of challenges. We want to know what timeline was suggested in that early consultation before next week.

In the fifth paragraph, Mr. Quinn states that the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board commenced its formal engagement with the committee in May 2014 with a view to securing a derogation. He moves on to state that there were subsequent meetings. I do not see the date the derogation was granted, and by whom, in this memo. I want the minute of the meeting at which the derogation was granted, who attended that meeting and the full minutes of the meeting. There are three references to the fact that there were meetings about this matter but no reference in the document to when the derogation was actually approved. We want that in advance of the next meeting.

I am only mentioning those items. There are a few additional bits of information we require before next week and I am flagging those so we have them here in advance. This is very complicated. There is a big issue we will take up with him but, in essence, Mr. Quinn is saying that he was appointed to the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board by the Minister for Health and, as a civil servant, he was responsible to the Minister for Health in that respect and not the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. He was appointed by the Minister responsible for this and he is essentially saying he is satisfied, based on the cost overruns that came to light during that summer - and I know Deputy Jonathan O'Brien wants to comment on this - that the matter was being progressed up to the HSE and the Department of Health in a proper manner. That is why he felt no reason to raise it with the Minister. He again reiterates, from his point of view, that the Minister for Health is the line Minister for this project. He is also saying he raised it with neither the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform nor the Secretary General because they were not the line Minister.

In fairness to Mr. Quinn, I am giving his side of it because there has been much criticism on that issue. We will tease this out next week. To be fair to everyone, I wanted to say that.