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

We have to remember that quite a sizeable amount of money has been spent on facilities there in advance of the hospital breaking ground. We were also told that we need to learn lessons from previous or current developments, but we have only been looking at the national children's hospital. It would be very difficult to learn lessons from that because I do not know how long it will be before we have its final costings and how that will play out. One thing is certain: you need to have a very good business case and to nail down every screw and piece of wiring that goes into it in advance. The tighter that is, the more you can determine the final cost of such a building.

PwC was hired by the Department of Health to conduct the external assurance process and it recommended that the business case documentation be updated. It would be useful for us to know what shortcomings PwC found because that is the kind of thing we need to understand. We might, therefore, ask the Department of Health for information on the shortcomings that were found. The committee needs to be kept in the loop in relation to the various stages that this is at. The business case, the work that is done by the quantity surveyors and the design, etc., will be important. I have a real issue with where it has been located, but let us park that. At the very least, we need to be assured that we will not walk ourselves into the same situation that we now find ourselves in with the national children’s hospital.