Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The public deserves to know on an ongoing basis all of the costs related to this. We must remember when we spoke about this previously we were told the costs that were outlined, which had been signed off by the Government - and the Taoiseach put the figure in the public domain - were outside of issues such as fit-out and IT.

A significant number of months ago I stated the project cost would exceed €2 billion. In the Dáil, the Taoiseach did not reference me by name but said that people who were saying this were exaggerating. I now ask him to guarantee it will not exceed €2 billion. Given what is written here, the scale of the increase within a few months and the fact we now have a totally separate stream that will be uncosted, when the NPDHB is before us in a couple of weeks, we absolutely have to go through this in a level of detail that has not been seen before on behalf of the taxpayer because it is out of control. We do not know where it will end.