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

I will come back to the Deputy again for another round.

With regard to the procurement process, PwC stated that significant failures occurred during the crucial planning and budgeting stages of the project, that the basis of the original budget was flawed and that risks were underestimated in the business case. It stated there was a lack of sufficient comprehensive and robust planning for the process to establish a guaranteed maximum price, GMP. It went on about that. It also stated that the two-stage procurement process used to award the contract for the construction of the national children's hospital is widely used. That is fair enough. It stated that the process can deliver significant benefits in regard to accelerating project time but added that the controls required to mitigate the associated risks and the consequences of this approach were not put in place. In this regard, reference was made to the understanding of the risk profile, the procurement strategy and so on. Does Mr. Tierney want to comment on that from the point of view of the Department, which oversees this? His Secretary General was told, "Write the cheque." Has a lesson been learned in this regard?