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

The Chairman has stated that the committee recommends "that a comprehensive review is carried out following completion of this project to ensure lessons are learned for future capital projects". We do not know what the timeline of this is, but it could be another couple of years before it is completed and we see the conclusion of this. In the meantime, a similar project which was earmarked as costing €300 million in 2017 is now being talked about as a project of the same scale costing €1 billion, that is, the new national maternity hospital, which is equally mired in controversy about its site. It is very difficult to see how lessons are learned if the project is completed before the other one starts. How do we get even an interim understanding or some lessons? The two-phase process is not similar, but how do we get some lessons we do not have to wait another five years for? That is what it looks like. We will have the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board in before the committee. It would be useful to know what the most recent set of accounts is and whether another set of accounts is due soon.