Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am almost out of time and I have two final questions. During the questioning Mr. Griffin can tease out what he is going to say. My final question arises from the debacle of the national children's hospital. Would he be prepared to give a ballpark figure for how many multiples the Taoiseach might have been talking about, notwithstanding that he cannot give us details of the tender or the like? A ballpark figure to the nearest couple of hundred million of euro might give us an indication.

Second, taking the example of the national children's hospital, there appears to be a crisis in accountability to the extent that even though Mazars did a report we now need another one from PwC to find out whose fault it was that prices went up exponentially. Where does the buck stop on the NBP? Let us say, hypothetically, somebody is before the committee two years hence and the programme goes over budget by 70%. Will a PwC report be required then or is there a structure in place, given what one hopes is the lesson of the national children's hospital, where Mr. Griffin is in absolute control? Who is the chief executive over this? In the case of the national children's hospital, it appears that neither the Minister, the chairman of the board, the development board, the HSE or anybody else had an executive role. Everybody seems to have been non-executive and there was a blurring of the lines of responsibility. We know the outcome, but we do not know who is responsible. Does the Department have a structure in place whereby if the wheels come off this project it is Mr. Griffin's, John's, Mary's or the Minister's fault?