Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The guaranteed maximum price potentially has a huge implication on this year's Estimates. This committee was told repeatedly, not by the Minister but by the development board and the Department of Health that the great advantage of this two-stage process was that the State now had a guaranteed maximum price and that any future cost overruns would now be borne by the contractor. That was the single biggest defence given to this committee for this ill-fated two-stage process. The PwC report blows that completely out of the water, saying that it is complete nonsense. In fact, nine of the 11 recommendations speak about controlling further cost escalation that it clearly says will be borne by the State. Can the Minister explain why, on this huge issue, which might require hundreds of millions in additional required expenditure, there is such a massive discrepancy between what the Department and the development board believe or believed, which was that the guaranteed maximum price was as it appeared, and PwC saying that it is complete nonsense and that the State is potentially on the hook for hundreds of millions of euro in additional spend?