Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will be very quick because the issues have been outlined well. To find the origin of the problem we have to go back to the original decision rather than the reviews. It was the same building before this started as it was when the reviews were carried out. Over and over again we see a failure to anticipate or understand resource requirements. It is all very well to carry out a review afterwards. That is fine. The origin of many of these problems lies in the decision to take the project on and in the initial scoping. It would be useful to know if that unit of the Department has a function in identifying how those failures can be prevented in the first instance. I keep on saying that we have made a national pastime of creating problems and then trying to resolve them in reverse. In a lot of other countries projects are scoped out, the resource implications are considered, things are planned and governments do not end up with a very costly problem at the tail end.