Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions regarding the situation before I bring in members for a second round of questions. From talking to people about the national children's hospital, a fair assessment of it would be that it is a bit of a mess. That is the general consensus. There are two questions people would ask. One is when it will open, and there is no certainty in that regard, while the other is how much it is going to cost, and again there is no certainty in that regard. Would that be a fair assessment? The witnesses have said there is no certainty about the timeline or costs. There could be other additional costs. Mr Gunning mentioned in his statement the impact this is going to have on children. That is the big thing that is at the back of people's minds. Many of those children are extremely sick. The committee has had before it both children suffering from scoliosis and the parents of those children. There are additional waits and timelines and waiting lists

Everyone is saying that when the theatres are open, the waiting lists for those very sick children will hopefully come down. That is the pressure that is on it. The other pressure is on the Irish taxpayer in regard to it. I remember passing the site when it was a hole in the ground and people were asking whether it was ever going to be built and so on. One can see now the scale of the building and, as other members have said, it is impressive when one goes in. Some would say this is a flagship hospital and if we had done a box design, it might have been simpler. As was said, there may be awards in regard to it but this is something that will, hopefully, be there for the next 60 years.

One of the worries is around the key learnings from this. The worry others would have is that there is a tender out at the moment for the national maternity hospital and the big question everyone is asking is around the contract where the weakness seems to be. The worry for most people looking in today and who have discussed this is whether we are going to repeat this in the future. What they will want from politicians, from our witnesses and from everyone else is to know that there have been key learnings and that this will never happen again. Can the witnesses assure people, from the experience they have had and so on, that they have fed that into the political system and, probably more importantly, into the system itself that this is not going to happen and that we are not going to repeat those questions?

One of the clear weaknesses is that we agreed a contract on the basis of a design that was not finished and things have expanded since then. Is that a fair assessment with regard to the witnesses' view of what is happening to this? All of us have been approached by the general public but the consensus among the Oireachtas Members is that this is a mess and that it should never happen again.