Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with previous speakers about this. Like others, I was on the site and viewed the construction. It was my second time there in a period of eight to ten months so I have seen the development of the site and the progress made. What struck me from our visit was when those present spoke about changes being made and accounted for. Certain design changes had to be made and that accounted for costs and changes to plans. Ultimately, from our perspective as a committee, we must know the bottom line of how much the State will pay for this hospital. This has been rumbling on for years and certainly from that correspondence there does not seem to be any bottom line here. It is incumbent on us as a committee to probe that and try to get to the final cost or at least near enough to it. The public wants to know and it has a right to that.

I agree with previous speakers that we should invite in representatives of both the Department and the board to discuss that element as it is progressing and what we have seen in recent months. It is still a long way off completion and we must have some sort of crystallisation of cost.