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

Returning to the matter of the children's hospital, we have established a few things. One is that we are about 60% of the way through the project's financial costs. Some €873 million will have been drawn down by the end of the year by the contractor. Mr. Watt mentioned the €1.43 billion that was budgeted and that we are now at a figure of €1.7 billion as time has moved on, with increased costs due to construction cost inflation. In the figures that Mr. Watt gave, the hospital is to be completed at the end of 2024. That is in three years. At a rate of 4.5% inflation in construction, which is probably conservative, it will cost approximately €250 million extra due to inflation alone.

Then there are the claims on top of that. Regarding the total claims between now and completion of the contract, Mr. Watt is obviously going to say this is commercially sensitive, but is the figure in the region of hundreds of millions or tens of millions of euro?