Mr. Colm Desmond:

There is a governance process around all of the different components of the hospital, which confirms the point made by my colleague. That is going through all of those different components that Mr. Mulvany set out in a structured way. We have the three existing sites, which are now merging into one hospital group. We have those running costs and the salary costs of all of the individuals working in those hospitals at clinical and other levels, which are within the current base of expenditure for the system. Therefore, clearly that advantage is there when three hospitals are merged into one new site. There will be that in the base to bring forward.

Given that we are now moving to a state-of-the-art hospital in world terms, however, it will inevitably give rise to additional costs over time and it will be a challenge for the health sector, but those aspects are all part of the overall governance structure, which is co-ordinated by the children's hospital project and programme steering group, for example, with membership from the Department, the HSE, the development board and CHI across all of the different components. That includes the equipment piece, the IT electronic records piece, the digital supply piece that was mentioned, and the sheer practical aspects of combining all of the staffing from the three existing hospitals into one group under CHI.

That legislation has also been passed. The Minister has done his work in that area, so it is now one unified legislative structure for that purpose. It is a very big project along all of those streams. Deputy Doherty is right to raise the fact that running costs and revenue are a factor that require significant planning, but we have the advantage of having three existing sites and the cost is built into the base for those.