Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is enormously frustrating. We delayed our meeting at the turn of the year because this report was not ready. We pushed it from November out to January and from January out to February. At the meeting on 9 February, they told us that we would have the report in March but we did not receive it then. Every month has gone by since. It seems to be moribund in the Department, which is probably trying to get a handle on this. Being reasonable, at previous meetings recently, we decided to try to give the Department some space but at our last meeting, the consensus was that we needed some answers on this before the summer recess. I think I said that if we needed to come back during the summer recess to deal with this matter, we would. We cannot have a situation where this major capital project is literally cast adrift and we do not have the timelines, do not know where matters stand regarding the hundreds of claims between the contractor and the hospital board and do not have any shape on the final cost. We need to close regarding how we handle that today. Deputy Carthy indicated that he would like to speak on this.