Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It would be helpful if we were able to find out the cost of the private hospital that is being built in Spain that will cater for the people we are shipping over there because of the health services. I imagine it will probably compare fairly favourably with the pharmacy we have in Dublin.

This committee has a role to play and this follows on from Deputy Catherine Murphy's point. We need to get clarification in the here and now, from both the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, as to what measures and provisions they are putting in pre-contract and pre-tender to ensure we can say, in the same way almost anybody else in the world can, that when a contract is signed, this is how much the project will cost. It does not need to be kept secret if it is defined in the contract, or if there are provisions that say it will potentially go to this cost if X, Y and Z happen or it could be less if A, B and C happen. That is the way contracts are supposed to work when we are talking about construction. We did not have that in respect of the national paediatric hospital. That is why we are still figuring out three quarters of the way through building it how much it will actually cost. It has not happened in far too many other areas so it must happen here. If it does not, and we end up in a situation where the Committee of Public Accounts in ten or 15 years is having the same conversations about this hospital as we are about the national paediatric hospital, one will have to say it is time to bloody take down the whole system and start again.