Mr. Robert Watt:

Between 2012 and spring 2017, we had extensive discussions with the Department of Health and the HSE about the project, its optionality, the costs involved and, critically, the governance structure. The emails and correspondence, or at least the timeline for those discussions, have been set out in the public domain. We raised issues with the governance because of its complexity and we wanted to ensure that whoever was given responsibility for managing the project, that is, the sponsoring agency, had the necessary expertise. That led to the decision to establish the children's board, which comprised people with significant experience, mostly in the private sector where people had experience dealing with large projects. Tom Costello, for example, who chaired the board, had worked for Sisk for 30 years in Ireland and elsewhere, while other people on the board had a whole variety of relevant qualifications. We had discussions about governance because we were concerned about it and wanted to ensure there was clarity as to which body was the sponsoring entity and which body was the sanctioning authority that would manage the oversight on a daily basis on behalf of the Government. They were our concerns and we raised them consistently.

I am not allowed to discuss Government memos because they are covered by other procedures but, as the Minister for Health and the Secretary General at the Department of Health have set out, the Government memo of 2017 outlined the governance structure. At that point, we were satisfied that the governance structure could deliver the project. Long before my time, the Department had consistently raised issues with the cost of the project, which has been running for 20 or 30 years. In 2012, there was the issue with the Mater Hospital site and there was the decision where the planning permission was refused. We went back to the drawing board and the then Minister for Health, Senator Reilly, came forward with a review of the different options. It was decided that the hospital would be co-located with St. James's Hospital and then it was off and running. We had significant problems with the cost of the project and how we could manage it given its scale. We made those concerns known to the Department and they were consistently set out in observations on memos during that period.